


Rewritten

by TheSigyn



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-05 17:16:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16371800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn
Summary: A magic crystal is kicked aside rather than shattered, and an old world is closed behind. How do you move forward in a life without a history? And what if your history isn’t what you thought it was?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 12 years, 12 seasons challenge on Elysian Fields. Stunning and inspirational banner by sandy_s

 

        “We shouldn’t go in!” Joan said to Alex just as Alex said the same to Joan. “We shouldn’t? We killed someone. You did? A vampire. Us too!”

        “Stop it!” Dawn said “How did you learn to talk together like that, anyway?”

        Alex and Joan looked down at her. “Well, with our minds blank of course we’re all thinking the same thing,” Alex said. He looked up at the hospital, trepidatious. “You really don’t think we should go in?”

        “No,” Joan said. “The hospital isn’t going to solve our memory problems if it’s a spell. And Randy can’t go in. Maybe I shouldn’t, either.”

        “Why not?”

        “Well, we just killed a bunch of vampires and a scary shark monster. Also, Randy’s a vampire.”

        “It’s okay,” Randy said just as the others all stared at him in horror. “I don’t want to bite anyone. I think I’m special.”

        “He thinks he has a soul,” Joan said with a bit of an eyeroll.

        “Hey, it makes sense!” Randy said indignantly. “Why else would I be palling around with a superhero?”

        “How do you know you were palling around with us?” asked Alex. “Maybe you were there to kill us.”

        “If he wanted to kill us, he would have,” Joan said. “He can’t be evil, or he’d still  _be_ evil, right? A soul makes as much sense as anything.”

        “Don’t vampires have souls?” Tara asked.

        “I don’t think they do,” Willow said.

        “Look. We should just go back to the magic shop and see what Anya and Rupert have come up with,” Joan said.

        “But _we’re_ human, right?” asked Dawn. “Shouldn’t we go in and see what they can do for us?”

        “I don’t know,” Joan said. “If Randy wasn’t a vampire, I’d say yes, but… he is. And I’m different. I think now that the other vampires have been taken care of, we’re probably better off all staying together.”

        “Okay,” said Willow.

        Randy led them back to the magic shop, where Anya and Rupert were snuggled together over a book. The magic shop looked a mess. Whatever they’d done it hadn’t helped with their memories, and had apparently caused a lot of trouble. “No luck?” Joan asked.

        “No luck,” said Rupert. “Reciting random spells is not going to get us back to normal. I think Anya and I proved that rather conclusively. It’s going to take systematic research to discover what happened to us. Why aren’t you at the hospital?”

        “Randy’s a vampire!” Alex said breathlessly.

        They quickly filled each other in on their adventures of the evening. By the time they’d all caught each other up, the sky outside was starting to brighten. Anya conscientiously put a sign on the door of the magic shop.  _Closed Due To Illness_. “We aren’t in a position to sell anything to customers today,” she said.

        “All right.” Joan strode forward and pulled the book out from underneath Rupert’s hand, leaving it open on the center of the table. “Look. I think it’s clear that whatever has happened, it’s not just going to solve itself. So until Rupert and Anya have time to do proper research, we’re going to have to sort this out by ourselves. Willow? Tara? Do your student IDs have an address on them?”

        “For the school,” Tara said. “Nothing about where we live.”

        “Oh, maybe we have dorms,” Willow said.

        “Alex?”

        “My drivers license has an address.”

        “Mine does, as well,” Rupert said.

        “All right. Rupert, you should go home and find out what you can make sense of there. Is there a map of this town anywhere in this place?”

        “I think I saw one,” Anya, said. “It’s all marked up with notes about various vampire nests, but it seemed to be this town.”

        “All right. Let’s take a look at it.”

        They pulled out the map and located the street with the magic shop on it. The college was pretty far away, but Alex’s apartment seemed to be within walking distance. “Alex, you and Willow and Tara go to your place. See what you can find out there. Anya? You don’t have ID, right?” Joan asked.

        “No.”

        “I don’t think anyone should go alone. Can you go with Rupert?”

        Anya smiled. “Of course I can.”

        “What about us?” Dawn asked, indicating her and Randy.

        “I think the three of us should stay here until we come up with something. Randy can’t leave, can you?”

        Randy opened the door of the magic shop, cringed, and came back, his hands and face smoking a little. “Nope,” he said. “In fact, I think I’d better get in the back, away from the windows.” He retreated to the gym room at the back of the shop. He looked uncomfortable.

        “Dawn? You and I will help Randy. There’s weapons back there, we should be ready if more vampires or something show up. Everyone set? All right. Let’s see what we can figure out.”

        They all set off for their various destinations.

 

***

 

        “I don’t have a key,” Rupert said.

        “What?”

        “None of these keys fit this lock,” he said. The apartment building was quaint and well kept, but he didn’t recognize the arched doorway, or the garden outside, or any of it. “And the mail.” He picked up the mail in the box by the door. “Look, this isn’t my name.”

        “Well, that’s absurd,” Anya said. “We have to live somewhere.” She knocked boldly on the door. “Hello! Anybody in there!” She pounded steadily. “Open up!”

        A rustling on the other side of the door revealed itself to be a man in a bathrobe. “It’s seven AM,” he said with irritation. “What on earth do you want?”

        “I want my apartment back,” Anya said rudely.

        “I’m sorry, sir, there seems to be some kind of mix up,” Rupert said. “My ID said that this was my apartment. I’m… um… having some memory difficulties. You know how it is, hard night out.” He showed the man his ID.

        The frown on the man’s face cleared. “Oh, you. You were the tenant before me, weren’t you? I’d heard you’d gone back to England.”

        Rupert touched the ticket in his pocket and sighed. The mystery was becoming slowly clearer. He had already missed his flight.

        “When did you move here?” Anya asked suspiciously.

        “More than two months ago,” he said. “Here, your mail was supposed to be forwarded to this address.” He rummaged in a drawer in a table by the door. “Some place called the Magic Box?”

        “We’ve been there. Thank you anyway. Have a pleasant day,” Rupert said.

        Anya sighed as they trudged back toward the Magic Box. “Well, darn it! I wanted a shower. I’m covered in bunny snot, I’m sure one of them sneezed on me. I wanted a shower and some fresh clothes and some sex before we went back to the others.”

        Rupert choked. “Excuse me?”

        “You heard me,” Anya said. “I don’t think it’s very fair, your up and selling our apartment like this. Just because we’ve had a bit of a falling out doesn’t mean that leaving me homeless—”

        “You don’t know that’s what happened,” Rupert said. “You are always so demanding and overbearing.”

        “You don’t know what I’m like,” Anya said. “Besides, you’re a pompous know it all who doesn’t know how to support a woman’s needs.”

        “You don’t know anything about me!” Rupert said.

        “I know you never opened up,” Anya said. “That’s why we’re on the outs. You never try to understand me.”

        “You’re being spectacularly unfair,” Rupert said.

        “I just wanted a shower and some sex!” Anya cried out. She stopped walking. “That’s what’s not fair.” Her face crumpled and she started to cry.

        Rupert was struck with unbidden tenderness. “There, there,” he said, gathering her into his arms. “There, there, darling, we’ll see it right. I-I love you.” He didn’t know if this was true, but it seemed the right thing to say.

        “I love you, too,” Anya sniffled. She reached up and gave him a tear-thickened kiss. “Please don’t leave me,” she said again. “I feel so empty inside. I can’t take this emptiness without you.”

        Now he felt something. A sympathy and compassion that he couldn’t deny. He knew what it was to feel empty, he was sure of it. More than just now, he was sure his soul knew despair. He couldn’t leave someone alone it it. “Never,” he whispered. “We’re in this together, dear. I promise you.”

        They embraced, standing staunch beside each other in the crisp, clear morning air.

 

***

        “Well, this is my place,” Alex said. “I seem to be into carpentry.”

        “That is a nice set of tools,” Tara said, examining the tool rack on the wall.

        “I live here!” Willow said. She came running out of the bedroom with a new dress in her hand. “Look, I live here. I found my closet.”

        Tara sighed. “Oh.” She looked disappointed. “Well, at least you’re figured out, then.”

        “Maybe we’ll find where you live when we get to the college,” Willow said. “In the meantime, you want to borrow some clean clothes? We have been crawling in a sewer.”

        “That sounds really nice,” Tara said. She and Willow went into the bedroom while Alex went through his papers.

        “Hey, guys?” he called out. “I think I have a car.”

        “What?” Willow popped her head around the bedroom door. “What makes you say that?”

        “I paid for a parking space. Here.”

        “Well, that’s great. You can drive us to the college. Hey, Tara! Alex has a car!”

        They went down to find it, Tara and Willow in fresh clothes, and Alex drove them to the college offices. “Hi,” Willow said when they got there. “We need new copies of our schedules, syllabi, professors.”

        “And I don’t suppose you have my address on file?” Tara asked. “I need to find my dorm room.”

        “What’s your name?” said the bored secretary.

        “Tara… um….” She had to check her ID to remember her last name. “Tara Maclay.”

        “Hm…. Nope. No current address on file. You had a dorm room last year, but you gave it up.”

        “I gave it up? Why?”

        “No idea. Here’s your schedule. And yours.”

        “Hey, we have classes together,” Willow said.

        “That’s great!”

        Alex felt a little wistful. The two of them seemed so… in sync. He’d heard Willow in her whispered conversation to Dawn, when she said she felt kind of gay. He wondered if he was about to lose Willow. It would have felt like losing his best friend. More than just his girlfriend, he knew he loved her. It was so clear in the way he felt about her, her hair, her eyes, the way she laughed. He knew her.

        An idea was tickling the back of his head, but it seemed so outrageous, so impossible, that he knew he couldn’t dare mention it to them. It was like a teenage boy’s fantasy. No, he was with Willow. He shouldn’t be thinking anything more.

        Willow and Tara decided to check out a class they both shared. “Um, hi,” Tara said when they got there.

        “Hey, guys,” said a girl none of them recognized. “What’s up?”

        “Um… look,” Tara said. “Do you know us?”

        “Huh?”

        “It’s a game,” Willow said quickly. “Pretend…. Oh, just pretend we both knocked our heads together and woke up with amnesia,” she said. “What would you tell us about us? Like… where we lived, and what we do?”

        The girl laughed. “Is this like a scavenger hunt?” she asked.

        “It’s to find out how well your friends really know you,” Tara said. “So… uh… where do I live?”

        “Well, you two live together, don’t you?” the girl asked. “Aren’t you, like, together?”

        The two girls’ eyes opened wide.

        “Right,” Alex said suddenly, jumping forward. “Of course, thanks. You passed, you know them really well. Thanks uh… whatever your name is.”

        “Emily,” she said. “Wait, don’t I get to ask them something about me?”

        Alex dragged Willow and Tara away before they had to answer, ducking them behind an archway.

        “What’s going on,” Willow said. “I thought I was with Alex.”

        “I thought you were with Alex, too,” Tara said.

        “I think—” Alex began.

        “I mean, I knew I was attracted to you, but I thought…”

        “Yeah, do you feel kinda gay? ‘Cause I do, too.”

        “But you live with me,” Alex said.

        “Oh… yeah,” Willow said. She looked up at Alex. “I… I mean you… we’re….” She swallowed. “You’re sweet and all, Alex, and I… I think I do feel something there, but… maybe we read too much into….”

        “Your clothes in my closet?” Alex said.

        Willow’s head sank. “Do you think I’m cheating on you?” she asked.

        “No, I don’t. Look, I have a theory. Tell me if I’m crazy.” He paused, nervous, and then said. “You both live with me.”

        “But there’s only one bed.”

        “And one closet.”

        “And we didn’t—you mean…?” Willow blushed, looked from Alex to Tara, and then blushed harder.

        “I know it sounds crazy, but… it also sounds… kinda nice too… doesn’t it?”

        Tara looked nervous. “I don’t know. I mean I do feel something for Willow, but…” She looked Alex. “Sorry. I got nothing.”

        “Well… maybe that’s how it is,” Alex said. “I mean, maybe I just… watch you two.” Now he was blushing.

        “No,” Willow said. “You and I are definitely together. But….” She looked over at Tara.

        “I think we’re together, too,” Tara said softly, and she started blushing, also.

        “It’s, uh… just a working theory. I mean, we don’t need to act on it or anything,” Alex said. “Just… if that’s what’s happening… well….”

        “No, it makes sense,” Willow said. “And I’d much rather believe that than that I’m cheating on one of you. It is… kinda hot.” She giggled. Then Tara giggled, too, and Alex couldn’t help it. He wrapped his arms around both of their shoulders and kissed one then the other of them on their foreheads. All three of them laughed nervously and joyously in the hallway of the college.

 

***

 

        “She’s asleep,” Joan said as she came down to the basement. “Thanks for getting her set up.”

        “Hey, there was a gym mat, and a blanket, it made sense to me. She’s just a kid,” Randy said on the basement steps. “Kids need their sleep. She’d been up all night.”

        “You have, too,” Joan said.

        “I think I probably stay up all night, anyroad,” Randy said with a bit of a smirk. “Vampire, right?”

        “Yeah.” She stopped and looked up at him. “You okay with that?”

        “Well, I’m going to have to be, aren’t I?”

        “You really didn’t know? I mean, you didn’t have any inkling at all that you weren’t human?”

        “Was a bit busy, love. Did you know you were superhuman until you started working the muscles?”

        “No,” she said. “But a vampire, I mean… heartbeat’s a thing, right? And that moving face fang thing, and don’t you have like super smelling stuff?”

        “You don’t know your name, but you know all about vampires?”

        “I don’t know what’s happened to us, but it’s some kind of selective memory loss. Who we are is gone. But we can still walk and talk and stuff, so… yeah. I think I still know all about vampires.”

        Randy sniffed. “I can smell a lot. Didn’t occur to me that the rest of you couldn’t. Was too busy to look for a pulse.”

        “Well, you have now.”

        “Yep.” He held out his wrist for her. She thought she remembered how to check for a pulse. She touched his cool wrist. Nothing.

        “Been playing with the fangs a bit, too,” he said. “They come up when I think about eating, and apparently when I’m angry.  I can keep them down if I want to.”

        “And bring them up, too?”

        Randy’s face went still for a moment, and a second later he went all fangy. Joan’s heart beat a little faster. He shook it away again. “I prefer it like this,” he said, once he was back to normal. He stared into the distance. “I’m going to have to find some way to get blood.”

        “Are you getting hungry?”

        He scratched his eyebrow. “A bit,” he said. “Maybe I can hunt rats. I don’t want to hunt rats.” He looked over at Joan. “But I really don’t want to bite you, I swear.”

        “It’s okay. I don’t think you’re our enemy.”

        “Why not?”

        “You don’t feel like an enemy.”

        “You ran from me.”

        “The fangs startled me,” Joan said defensively. “Can you blame me?”

        Randy wanted to feel indignant, but all he really felt was sad. “No.”

        “At least you know what you are,” Joan said. “I have no idea what I am.”

        “What do you mean?”

        “Well, you’re a vampire. Anya’s a witch or something. Or is it Rupert who’s a wizard? Anyway, we know what your powers are. I’m a what? Bitten by a radioactive spider? Injected with super drugs?  Born with mutant powers? What am I?”

        “You’re something amazing, is what you are,” Randy said. “By the way. Thanks.”

        Joan frowned. “For what?”

        “Well, you’ve got us sorted this far. Better to have a leader.”

        Joan laughed quietly, hopelessly. “Wow.”

        “What?”

        “I’m faking it,” she said. “Can’t you tell?”

        “You fake it well,” Randy said. “Besides, aren’t you the superhero?”

        “You’re all magic with superpowers, too,” Joan said. “Who’s to say you aren’t the leader?”

        “I think making the vampire with the soul the boss is bound to be a mistake. Wouldn’t he be corruptible?” He glanced at Joan. “Better to have someone with a strong hand to keep him in line.”

        “Unless you’re stronger than me,” Joan said.

        “That would be a laugh,” Randy said. “Here.” He got up off the steps and cleared some boxes off of a bench. “Let’s check.”

        “Huh?”

        He set his arm up on the bench. “Arm wrestle?”

        “Oh, you are so gonna get trounced.” She slid her hand up against his cool one and pushed her strength against his.

        It was tense for a moment, but then she sort of figured out which muscles to use, and bam, it was over. Randy’s arm was slapped to the side of the bench.

        “Ow.” Randy rubbed his arm. “Well, that settles it. You’re definitely the leader. Told you.”

        “Okay, so I’m strong.”

        “And a good fighter.”

        “I wonder which one of us is better.”

        They stared at each other in the dim basement light, looks of mischief on both their faces. A moment later they were pushing boxes and benches out of their way to make a small arena. “All right,” Randy said. “Torso and head. First three impacts wins.”

        “If blood is drawn, time out,” Joan said. “We don’t know what smelling my blood would do to you.”

        “Fair enough.”

        “And no fangs. Fangs come up, I’ll know you’ve lost control or something.”

        “No killing me if I do?”

        “Suppression techniques only.”

        “Well, lay on,” Randy said.  

        “Huh?”

        “It means start fighting,” Randy said, letting his guard down. Joan got in the first punch, right to his nose. “Ow! That’s cheating!”

        “How?”

        “I hadn’t started yet!”

        “Yes you had, you said you had.”

        “Fine!” Randy kept his hands up and made a few feints. Joan threw a few more punches, but he blocked them. Then he slid under her guard with an uppercut to the jaw.

        “Ow!” She turned and kicked him, cutting right through his defenses to the torso.

        “Ugh!”

        The three blow rule was quickly thrown out the window. They threw punch after punch, kick after kick, circling around each other in the cellar, their senses each honed in on the other. They grabbed and wrestled, at several points checking to make sure it was all all right. “No throws,” Joan said after Randy had her in a grapple. “Not fair to ruin Rupert’s inventory.”

        “Straight down?”

        “Sure.”

        He threw her straight to the ground and laughed. Joan kicked his legs out from underneath him and surged to her feet.

        “We really should be doing this in the gym,” Joan pointed out.

        “Little bit’s asleep in there. At least now we know what the gym is for.”

        “Gotta keep those skills honed.”

        Randy flipped himself upright and they circled each other again. “Who’s winning?”

        “The one with the least bruises,” she said.

        “Well, I wasn’t planning on hurting you. Much.”

        “You haven’t even come close to hurting me.”

        “Oh, yeah? What’s that, then?” He darted a hand out and hit her again on a spot on her cheek he’d already hit once. A bruise was rising.

        “That’s a mistake,” Joan said, grabbing his arm. She twisted it too far, threw him over her head, and went down with him, landing him on the ground. “And this is where I hit you in the face with a volley,” she added leaning over him, “and knock you completely down for the count.”

        They were both breathing fast and hard, their bodies attuned perfectly to each other. Her breath smelled deliciously fragrant. Randy couldn’t help himself. His head leaned up for a kiss.

        Joan pulled away, startled. “What….” She climbed off him.

        “I…”

        “I didn’t…”

        “I’m sorry, I…”

        “No, I get it.”

        “There was a moment,” Randy said. “I had an impulse.”

        “I get it,” she said again.

        They felt very close.

        “Do you think we… you and I, are we…?”

        “I don’t know,” Joan said. “I mean… we probably… shouldn’t. You’re a vampire, I’m… not.”

        “Right. You’re not. But… I mean, we are together.” He felt stupid. “I mean not together, we don’t know if we’re together, but we were together, in the shop, I mean. Together in this state together, you know?”

        “Yeah, I know.”

        “I’m sorry, I… I really did have an impulse.”

        “Maybe we should… not rely on impulses,” Joan said.

        Randy’s shoulders sagged. “What else have we got?” he asked. “I mean, you and Dawn decided you were sisters on the tiniest bit of banter. Who’s to say my impulses mean less than yours?”

        “Dawn and me being sisters isn’t some kind of life-altering choice,” Joan said. “She’s still in high school. Someone needs to take charge of her, and it might as well be me.”

        “Yeah, but you two...” He stopped. “High school!”

        “What about it?”

        “She’d still be in high school. How many schools are in this town? She’s got to be enrolled in one of them. They’d have her name and address, and her parents maybe.”

        “I should look at the map,” Joan said.

        They headed upstairs and found something called Litchfield High was the closest school to where they were. There was also something called Sunnydale High closer, but it was crossed off on the map with, “Mayor bits” written on it, which led Joan to believe it wasn’t active.

        “I’ll call the school, see if there’s a Dawn registered and how much information they’ll give me over the phone. Thank you so much, Randy!” She hugged him tightly.

        Randy closed his eyes as a thrill went through him at her touch. The fight had seemed perfectly normal, exciting but fairly typical. He figured he and Joan sparred a lot. But that hug had been electric. He wrapped his arms around her and embraced her in return, breathing in the scent of her hair.

        He’d been mad not to realize what scents could do to him. She smelled like windsong and sunlight and Sunday lunch. Impulses or not, memory or not, Randy knew now. Whatever else he had been, he was madly in love with Joan.

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

        Randy was in love with her. Joan was sure of that now. The way he looked at her, the way he stammered at her sometimes, and when he’d tried to kiss her…. That impulse of his had been more than just a passing whim. He’d positively groaned as he reached for her.

        She kept giving him little glances as she clutched the address in her hand. After Rupert and Anya had gotten back she’d gone to the school herself to look into Dawn’s record. “Dawn… um… Dawn…. Heh. You know Dawn, right?” She jerked her sister beside her, sure it would sell it if they were together.

        “Just let me look,” the receptionist had said. “Dawn Summers?”

        “Is that the only Dawn you have?” Dawn asked.

        The secretary looked up. “Don’t you know your own last name?”

        “Of course she does,” Joan said. “You know we do. You’ve seen her around, right?” She kept herself from muttering her tiny prayer of  _please, please, please._

        “I think so.”

 _Yes!_ “I just wanted to look at your records. We haven’t been getting the school newsletter.”

        Dawn lost her patience with this lie and went across the office to a panel of informational fliers. “Safe Sex and You,” read one. “Proper nutrition for a growing body,” said another.  

        “You do have a newsletter, right?” Joan asked.

        “Yes,” the secretary said, suspicious.

        “Well, yeah, we haven’t gotten it, so I just wanted to make sure you have her address written down right.”

        The secretary’s eyes narrowed. “1630 Revello Drive.”

        “That’s right,” Joan said quickly. “1630 Revello.” She wrote it down on a piece of scratch paper, hoping she didn’t seem too crazy. “I’m her sister,” Joan added, hoping it was even true. “Is that who you have down as her guardian? I mean that  _is_ who you have down as family, right? I’m referenced there?”

        “Buffy Summers?” the secretary asked.

        “ _Buffy?_ ”

        “That’s what it says here. Buffy Summers, relationship, sister.”

        Joan was horrified. “Right,” she said wanly, and looked over to Dawn, who thankfully didn’t seem to have heard. She wasn’t sure she was ready to be  _Buffy_  yet.  “Buffy Summers.” She trailed away from the high school clutching the precious address, and went back to the Magic Box.

        They waited for sunset, in deference to Randy. Willow, Tara, and Alex had come back by then, and reported that they all three seemed to live at Alex’s apartment. They were oddly coy about it beyond that. As soon as it got dark they all went in search of Revello Drive together.

        The front door was locked.

        “Maybe there’s a key under a frog or something,” Joan said.

        “Or maybe we should just break in,” Randy said.

        “Or ask me,” Dawn said. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a key on a woven lanyard. “Here goes.” The key slipped into the lock, and the door to 1630 Revello Drive opened under her hand.  

        Joan stared around the house in bewilderment. She recognized nothing. No inkling of remembrance. “Hello?” she called out. “Is anyone home?”

        “I thought you thought we lived here?” Dawn asked.

        “Well, we’re sisters, maybe we have family,” Joan said. “Hello?”

        “Let’s look around,” Anya said. She pushed past the others and started poking through knickknacks. “Rupert,” she called out. “We live here!”

        “What?”

        “You have a garment bag in this closet, with one of your suits in it. And you have a suitcase here with your name on it.”

        “A suitcase?” Joan asked.

        “Yes. Apparently I was going on a trip to England,” Rupert said. “The flight was late last night. I missed it.”

        “Oh.”

        “I must live here, too,” Anya announced. “Let me through.” She pushed up the stairs, leaving the others still examining the ground floor.

        “There’s a weird pile of ash on the fireplace,” Dawn said, examining it. “It looks like it might have been a spell.”

        “A spell? Let me look at it,” Rupert said. He cleaned his glasses and bent down to examine the ashes.

        “Willow?” Tara called. “You have a computer here.”

        “I do?” Willow went into the dining room where a laptop was set up on the table. Willow’s name was stuck on with a sticker on top of it. “Huh. Let’s see if I know how to work this.”

        “And Tara, you have a backpack here,” Dawn said, examining one of three that were piled against the wall. “You and Willow must do your homework here a lot.”

        “Well, we are all friends,” Willow said. “Aren’t we? Or we wouldn’t have all been together, right?”

        “Oh, you’re friends,” Anya called down from upstairs. “Joan’s room has photographs of you and Alex and Dawn.”

        “How do you know it’s my room?” Joan called up.

        “It’s far too small to be mine,” Anya said. “Rupert, I found our room. It’s the biggest, and it’s got  _loads_ of my clothes! Come on up!”

        “I think I had better…” Rupert slid up the stairs after Anya.

        It didn’t take long for the rest of the household to be searched. Dawn found what she was sure was her room right away. The backpack on the bed confirmed it. Joan glanced into Anya’s room to find her already trying on clothes, and Rupert looking a little harried as he sat on the bed. “This is great,” Anya was saying. “Now we know where we live, we have a place to have sex, now.” Joan pulled her head out of the room hurriedly.

        She looked into the other room. There was a bed there, and butterfly decals on the wall, and a New Kids on the Block poster. There were photographs of her with Alex and Willow, and a picture of her and Dawn with an older woman who looked a lot like Joan. Maybe that was their mother? She wondered what had happened to their mother.

        A knock sounded on the open door behind her. “Any clues up here?” Randy asked her.

        “I don’t know,” Joan said. “This is probably my room.”

        Randy slipped inside with her. “It smells like you,” he said.

        “What are the others doing?” Joan asked.

        “Willow’s looking through her laptop, and Tara her school bag. Willow’s mostly finding research on demons and spells. I think she’s our librarian. Tara might be a witch. She has a lot of spell ingredients in her bag. Anya’s sure she’s a witch too, since she has lots of magic items in her room. Dawn’s just enjoying her bedroom.”

        “She’s sure it’s hers?”

        “She’s positive,” Randy said. “Aren’t you sure about this one?”

        Joan sighed. “I don’t know anything in here. I don’t recognize a thing. I mean you, I feel something with you.”

        “With me?” Randy asked.

        “I mean with all of you,” she said hurriedly. “I mean, I feel something about people. I know that Willow and Alex are friends of mine, and I feel really close to Rupert, and Tara and Anya… they feel familiar, and I’m  _sure_  Dawn’s my sister. All of you." She pointedly left out how she felt about Randy, because she had absolutely no clue how she felt about him. She trusted him, but that was all she was sure of. Everything else about him was just a tangled roar of confusion, and she was frightened to look too closely at it. “But this room? Nothing. It doesn’t feel like mine.”

        “Maybe it isn’t. Maybe your room is the one Anya’s in.”

        “No, this is mine,” Joan said. “It’s got my picture and stuff. Some of these books have my name in them.”

        “Joan?”

        She didn’t answer.

        Randy stepped further into the room. “Joan?” he asked, sensing something.

        “That’s not really my name,” Joan said nervously.

        Randy came closer to her, his eyebrow raised. “Oh?”

        “Um, no.”

        “What is your name, then?”

        She looked Randy square in the face. “Promise you won’t laugh?”

        “Cross my heart and hope to die,” he said, marking an X on his chest.

        “Does that oath even count on a vampire?” Joan looked down.

        “Give a dead man the benefit of the doubt, pet,” he said.

        “It’s, um… it’s Buffy.”

        “Buffy.”

        “Don’t laugh!”

        “I’m not laughing,” Randy said, though he had a curious smirk on his face. It was as if she’d suddenly grown white fur and a tail, and he wanted to cuddle her.

        Joan/Buffy rolled her eyes.

        “Hey, what right I have got to laugh at your name? I’m Randy, remember?”

        “Are you really?”

        Randy’s head cocked, and he looked her over. “I might be,” he said smoothly.

        Joan blushed and looked away. “I don’t like Buffy,” she said decidedly. “I don’t want to be Buffy.”

        “Well, you can always stick with Joan,” Randy said. “I wouldn’t mind.”

        “I thought you said it was bleh.”

        “It was Dawn who said it was bleh. I think it’s epic. Joan of Arc, Joan Jett, Joan… uh….” His memory failed him. “I’m sure there were others.”

        “How do you remember about those?” Joan asked. “And who’s Joan Jett?”

        “A singer, I think. Besides, how did you remember that Joan was even a name?”

        “Fair enough.” She frowned. “Buffy.  _Buffy._  Buff-eee. It sounds like something you’d do to a car.”

        “Sounds like the posh nickname of a high-society toff,” Randy said. “But what can I say? I sound like a wanker out on the pull.”

        “Well, why don’t you pick something besides Randy?”

        “Like what?”

        “I don’t know. Tony or Andrew or Scott.”

        “I’m not a Scott.”

        “Aren’t you?”

        “I’m not calling myself Scott,” Randy said. “I’d rather be Randy.” He grinned, and it looked positively evil. He moved in on her, getting just a little too close. He smelled really good.

        That confusion inside her roared again. “I think we should compare notes,” Joan said hurriedly. She pushed past him out of the room, calling everyone downstairs before the confusion could settle down into a feeling she wasn’t ready to have just now.

        They convened around the dining room table. “All right,” Joan said. “What do we know?”

        “I live here,” Anya said quickly. “Rupert and I both do.”

        “Your things were in suitcases though, weren’t they?”

        “I was clearly about to take a trip,” Rupert said. “Though until I know the purpose of it, it must be postponed. Perhaps it was something routine. A buying trip or some such, for the shop.”

        “I have a bedroom upstairs,” Dawn said.

        “And so do I,” Joan said. “Alex, you and Willow said you lived together?”

        “And the girl at school said I lived with Willow,” Tara said. “So that must mean I live with Alex.”

        “So that’s everyone settled except for Randy,” Alex pointed out.

        “Maybe I live in the basement,” Randy said.

        “Why do you think that?” Joan asked.

        “Because I didn’t need to be invited,” Randy said. “Vampires need to be invited in, don’t they?”

        “I believe that’s true….” Rupert said slowly.

        “Well, I need to stay somewhere, and if Rupert and I are related. I mean, you wouldn’t kick me out in the cold just because I’m a vampire now, would you Dad?”

        “No, of course not.” A light shone in Rupert’s face. “That must be it. I run a magic shop. When my son was converted to a vampire, I used the books of magic to give him back his soul.”

        “I guess that makes sense,” Joan said.

        “I say we go to bed, and reconvene in the morning,” Anya said decisively. “I’m tired, we’ve been up all night and all day, and it’s time to go to bed.”

        There was a long silence. Finally Joan spoke up. “She has a point, it’s been a long day. Anyone disagree with sleeping on it and starting fresh in the morning?”

        “I am tired,” Alex confessed.

        “So am I,” Tara said.

        “Alex can drive us back to his place,” Willow said. “The rest of you stay here, and we’ll come back in the morning?”

        “Sounds tasty,” Joan said.

        Randy swallowed.

        As everyone else headed out, Randy stopped Joan. “Joan, love, I have to go out.”

        “What for?”

        “I need to find some blood. The longer I’m with you all, the better you all smell. I must be getting hungry.”

        This thought worried her. “What are you going to do?”

        “Hunt, I guess,” he said nervously. “There’s probably rats, stray cats, something.”

        She thought about this. Randy was a vampire, and now he wanted to go off on his own. “Do you want me to come with you?” she asked rather than accuse him of anything.

        Randy looked embarrassed. “I’m not sure I want anyone else to see it,” he said. “I feel a little ashamed even admitting it. I just thought someone should know where I was, in case something happens.”

        Joan looked hard at him. “OK,” she said. “Thanks for telling me. I’ll leave the back door unlocked for you.”

        “Thanks, love.”

        “Just make sure they are strays, and not someone’s pet let out for a walk or something, okay?”

        “Such a soft heart,” Randy said with a smirk. He reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. It was cool, and felt… safe. “Thank you, Joan.”

        “Buffy,” she reminded him.

        He smiled. “Joan,” he said instead, then headed out into the night.

        Joan did still feel more like a Joan. And Joan was a warrior. A warrior who knew she shouldn’t feel any shame about what she knew she had to do next.

        The moment Randy went outside she dashed up the stairs, grabbed a stake from the desk, and opened the window in her bedroom. Then, with an ease that suggested she probably did this a lot, she slipped from the porch roof to a tree, and caught a glimpse of Randy’s blond head tracing through the darkness. Joan followed after, half a block behind, mostly up trees or on top of buildings, keeping her body low and out of sight, hoping that her elevation would keep her scent from him.

        Fighting other vampires or not, claiming he had a soul or no, whether he shared their memory loss or was simply faking it, the truth was that she had to know if Randy was really one of them.

 

***

 

        Hunting was terrible.

        Randy had decided to start out small. He didn’t want to bite people, because he didn’t want to be a monster, but he wasn’t even sure he had it in him to hunt at all. When a cat crossed his path he eyed it speculatively, and then decided he couldn’t manage it. What if it was the treasured pet of some little girl, and here he’d be casually slaughtering it as if it were a chicken? No, no pets. He followed cars towards lights and people, and there he finally found dumpsters and alleyways. And there he found rats.

        And to his horror, it was remarkably easy. He decided he was going to hunt a rat, he crouched down to listen to one, his fangs came out automatically, and he pounced faster than a cat. Then he stood bewildered for a moment, while a terrified rat tried to bite him. He almost dropped it.

        How could he do this? The thing was sort of cute, despite its squeaking and its little rodent teeth. How could he plunge his fangs into this furry little beast and suck its blood out? It fur was slightly wet. What had it been rolling in? The idea of putting his mouth on it was revolting. He was all set to throw the rat away in disgust when someone stepped out of a club across the street. Someone hot and sweating, flushed with music and drink, and her scent carried across the alley to him.

        It was like a blow had struck him, one of pure hunger, and his body tensed. Saliva pooled in his mouth, and his stomach clenched. The rat was not appealing, but the drunken lady from the club, she was a hot and ready mouthful his teeth positively ached to close into. As if his body was under the control of someone else he found himself standing up, crossing the street behind her, stalking her, rat in his hand, sneaking closer and closer. She paused at a street light and tried to pull out a cell phone. She batted at it with drunken paws, giggling at her failed attempts to call a cab. It would be so easy to pull her into the shadows by the alley. She was so drunk she probably wouldn’t even scream. Visions of tearing the girl to pieces, her blood rushing over his tongue, filling his belly, soaking in her corpse, crunching into the bones so he could taste the marrow, all of it rushed through his head. It made his body clench up, and he breathed hard. He was within striking distance of the girl. All he’d have to do was reach out his hand… go for her throat… just… do it….

        Tears were stabbing at his yellow eyes, even as he dreamed.

        He hadn’t decided yet when the rat bit at his fingers, squeaking again, and shocking sensation away from his hunger and back into himself. The little rodent was still squirming in his hand. He had to do something. The choice was between one form of disgust and another. Disgust for what he had to do, or disgust for what he was. He turned away from the girl, faded into the shadows alone, banished all thoughts of slime and disease, and bit into the beast’s furry neck.

        The fur tasted terrible, and got caught in his teeth. He wanted bare skin, human skin, soft and hot and yielding. But then the blood touched his tongue, and he groaned. A twinge of something, a slight pain shot through his head, but after a moment it passed as the little beast died in his hands.

        He sucked and sucked and sucked on the blood, fresh visions of mayhem and bloodshed raking their way through his thoughts.

        He needed more. He  _needed_  more.

The girl was still laughing at her cell phone.

        He couldn’t stay here where drunken coeds were stumbling out of clubs. He turned and bolted back to the residential areas, away from helpless victims and dangerous temptations. He could do this. He would have to learn how to do this.

 

***

 

        Joan had watched him from atop the roof of the bar. She’d been all ready to swoop down on Randy with a stake the moment he touched the girl. She saw his struggle, even to the glint of moisture in his yellow eyes as emotion had torn at him. Then she watched him dive for the rat as if it was a lifeline, and flee from the temptation of the girl as if a demon were chasing him.

        She never caught up to him after that, but it didn’t matter. She was sure he hadn’t sensed Joan was tailing him, and she was equally sure that he didn’t want to be a killer. Rats clearly disgusted him, but the idea of hunting a human seemed to disgust him, too.

        It couldn’t have been easy.

        She headed back to the house at Revello Drive, which still did not feel like home, but sliding up to the second story window seemed like second nature. She closed the door and looked about the room for something, anything, that would help her sort out what she was feeling.

        She sat down at the vanity and looked through the pictures there. There were Alex and Willow, looking younger and happy. There was a photograph with the word Mom scrawled on the back of it. There was another photograph with her and Dawn. She opened a drawer. There were old necklaces, their chains tangled, some broken pencils, some scrunched up papers. A book of poetry. She pulled it out. Sonnets from the Portuguese. Inside it read, “To Buffy, from Angel. How do I love thee?” And underneath the book of poetry….

        Joan realized she’d struck gold.

        She kept a diary.

 

***

        Randy headed back into the residential areas. There had to be some compromise between filthy disgusting sewer rats and slaughtering innocent girls. But hunting the rat had been a lesson of sorts. Now that he had an idea what he was looking for—fast heart beats, a furry scent—he found what he needed to find. Sleeping up a tree, safely tucked away, he located a squirrel. He climbed the tree deftly and plucked it like an apple. He sucked it down still squeaking, and felt another twinge in his head. He decided it was something normal that happened while hunting.

        The squirrel tasted better than the rat, anyway. The fur was denser, and tasted cleaner than the city creature. He still wanted human skin between his teeth, but he no longer felt like such a filthy beast. He was just a hunter. Human beings hunted squirrels. He’d hunt like humans did, eating the things humans ate. Squirrels, deer. Maybe he could locate a butcher who would save blood for him. He didn’t have to be a monster.

        He hunted down another three squirrels, and it got easier each time. But the thoughts of murder and mayhem didn’t go away, and they were frightening. He didn’t want to be that kind of creature.

        He decided to go back home. If it was his home. Not that it mattered if it wasn’t. It was the only home he had in this empty, blank nothingness he had become. Blank nothingness filled, apparently, with bloodlust.

        How was he supposed to handle this?

        Joan was sitting at the kitchen counter when Randy came to the back door. She had hot cocoa and cookies, and she looked thoughtful. Randy took a deep breath before he opened the door, hoping to hide his emotion behind a cool mask. He wasn’t sure he could do it. Killing, even killing tiny animals, had woken up something ugly, and had shaken him to his core.

        “What are you still doing up?” he asked her.

        “I wanted to talk to you,” she said.

        “What about?”

        “I, uh… I found a diary I kept. It’s out of date, but… it can be hard to keep up a diary. Maybe I let it lapse.”

        “How out of date?”

        “I seem to have stopped keeping it just after I turned seventeen. I mean, I’m pretty obviously older than that, but it still answers a few questions. Willow’s in it, and Alex, and Rupert and Dawn.”

        “What about me?”

        “It looks like you’re in it, too,” Joan said. “The vampire with the soul. How many of those can there be?” She passed him the diary. “We were dating.”

        “We were?”

        “A few years ago we were, anyway. It looks like I really liked you. I kept calling you my angel.”

        Randy felt shy, though it was no more than he’d expected. He knew how he felt about Joan. There was no way that had been something he’d made up.

        “You can read it, if you want,” she said. “It’s only about six months, but it’s… well, it’s something. It says what I am, too. I’m something called a Slayer.” She looked down. “Turns out I wasn’t entirely happy about being one, either. I sort of wanted to be someone… normal.”

        “Is that what you want?”

        “Apparently.”

        “Not what you wanted,” Randy said. “What you  _want_. Now, the way you are.”

        Joan frowned a little and then shook her head. “No. I’m all… wicked strong and sort of awesome. Is it wrong that it makes me feel special?”

        “No,” he said. She was special, in a kind of wicked, awesome way. “Who would want to give that up?”

        “Well, it means some pretty heinous jobs,” she said. “I have to kill a lot of nasties, and not just vampires. There was this guy called the Master, and a really mean guy called Spike, and apparently you and I… it was hard to make it work.”

        “But we did it?”

        “Looks like it. I stopped writing it just after we, you know. Got together.”

        Randy sat down at the counter and read through the journal while Joan made more hot cocoa. It wasn’t long, and Joan – or rather Buffy – wasn’t the most erudite writer. It focused as much on what was happening at school as it did on the vampire stuff. She never said how she’d become a slayer. She called Rupert her watcher (neither of them knew what that meant) and Dawn’s presence seemed to be mostly cursory. She called Alex Xander, but Willow definitely had a crush on the guy, so it wasn’t surprising they were dating now.

        And she called Randy “Angel” throughout. There was nothing about Randy being related to Rupert Giles, but it was remarkably sketchy on details about him at all. Apparently Randy’s first interactions with Joan had been brief, cryptic, not particularly helpful, and mostly focused on their personal life more than her calling as a slayer. Then suddenly she was pining for him in full teenage crush mode, and from that point on he seemed to have taken her for granted.

        It left Randy feeling uncomfortable.

        “So.” Joan asked. “Ring any bells for you?”

        “A little,” Randy said. “That Drusilla you wrote about, she seemed familiar. I guess I must have made her. And that Spike guy you killed. I wish you’d asked me more about my past when we still remembered it. We could have used more detail.”  

        “Well, I didn’t know I was going to have to read it to get my entire life history, let alone yours,” Joan said. “It was a teenage girl’s diary. It talked about boys and problems with her mom.”

        “And vampires.”

        “Yeah,” Joan said. “So what do you think?”

        “About what?”

        “About us,” she said. “Epic love story, good allied with evil. You were the one who was all gung-ho about the mission of redemption earlier.”

        “You were also the one who threatened to stake me if I kept on yapping.”

        “I get the feeling I threaten to stake you a lot,” Joan said.

        Randy chuckled. “As far as epic love stories go, you wouldn’t think threats of impending death would rank up there in top ways to meet your soulmate. But apparently, Cupid has a sense of humour. At least according to this.” Randy held the little tome in his hands, frowning. “I don’t like that you never use my name.”

        “You said you didn’t like it much.”

        “Yeah, but  _angel?_  Am I that pretentious?”

        “Maybe… you don’t like being reminded you’re a demon.”

        “And this trick with the coat,” he said. “ _He said I looked cold, so he took off his coat to give it to me. He had these deep scratches on his arm._  I mean, can you pull a more obvious play? Check out my sexy wounds, pet.”

        “You didn’t say that.”

        “I might as well have. What were we, in a club? You were cold  _in a club?_ ”

        “Stop it!” Joan said. “These are our early years, you can’t expect us to have been perfect.”

        “Oh, I was perfect,” Randy said. The memory of that hot, drunken woman’s scent slipping out of that club hurt him. He could imagine Joan there, all in a warm glow, the music pulsing through them both, the pulse in her neck throbbing, throbbing. He looked up at her. He would have wanted his arms around her, wanted to close his teeth on her. The action was positively predatory. “According to this I’m a perfect cad.”

        “Hey!” Joan snatched the book back from him. “It was important to me.”

        Randy sighed. “I just… I don’t like the way I seem to be  _hunting_  you.” He looked down at his cup of hot cocoa. “Makes me uncomfortable.” He shook his head. “I’d rather we’d met in some gallant way. Saving you or something. Or even you saving me. Just… you know… something more open. I don’t like that I was all mysterious and secretive and stalking you in the dark, lying to you. It doesn’t feel like me.”

        “Well,” Joan said with an irritated shrug.

        Randy sat there glumly, and Joan’s shoulders were tense.

        “I’ll make it up to you,” Randy said out of the silence.

        “What?”

        “Let me make it up to you. Let me take you out proper, get dressed up, get you a dinner. None of this hinting I might be there and making you wait for me, or dropping insults as if they were compliments. I want to treat a lady like a lady, right?” He stood up and went to her, putting the diary aside. “Let me be a better man than I was, yeah?” He placed his hand on her arm, feather gentle touches on her warm skin. “What do you say?”

        “I… I don’t know.” His touch was doing things to her skin. Tingly, exciting things.

        “Tomorrow night?” he said low. “A proper night on the town. Just you and me, clever banter, get to know each other properly, yeah?” His hand moved from her arm to her hair, his thumb caressing her cheek. “I barely know you,” he whispered. “I want to know you.”

        “We barely know ourselves,” Joan said. “How can we know each other?”

        “Doesn’t seem to be stopping Anya and Rupert,” Randy said, glancing at the ceiling.

        Joan cringed. “Again? I thought they had finished already.”

        “I can hear them setting up for another run,” Randy said. “I get it. Feeling so empty inside, they probably want something to fill the space.”

        “Anya’s doing that, all right,” Joan said irritably. It bothered her. She wanted something to fill the emptiness in her, too, but she couldn’t bring herself to just throw caution to to the winds and fling herself unquestioningly into Randy’s arms. Even though they probably would have felt really good.

        “So what do you say?” Randy asked. “You, me?”

        “For all we know we’ll have our memories back by tomorrow. Rupert’s going to look into this spell, see if that ash had anything to do with it….”

        “Even if we get our memories back, we can still go out, can’t we?” He stepped a little closer to her, which was difficult, since they were already pretty close. “Come on, ‘slayer.’ Live dangerously.”

        Joan grinned suddenly. He looked anything but dangerous, with his bowtie and his tweed. She wondered what he’d look like with it off, and she realized even that thought was probably a clue. “All right,” she said. “All right, fine. We’ll spend the day trying to piece our lives together, and when the sun sets… you and I will go out.”

        “Sounds good to me, slayer. Can’t hardly wait.”

        “Can’t…” she swallowed, nervous. “Wait.”

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

        “Wait. Should we tell them?” Willow asked.

        Tara looked concerned. “I don’t know. Should they know?”

        “They probably  _already_  know,” Alex said.

        “But they don’t know, do they,” Willow continued. “I mean  _none_  of us know anything. So even if they did know, then they don’t know. They  _can’t_  know.”

        “Well, maybe we sh-shouldn’t tell them,” Tara said, becoming nervous.

        “No,” Alex said, taking a firm grip on her arm. “Tara, you listen to me. We have nothing to be ashamed of. We’ve done nothing wrong.” They hadn’t. Some fooling around, some petting, it wasn’t anything weird. Getting carried away while watching TV and then all three of them falling into bed searching for some comfort in the confusion wasn’t a bad thing. Alex refused to believe it so.

        “Some people would think so,” Tara said, looking at the ground, and Alex rubbed her upper arms comfortingly. Finally she sighed and went forward to hug him back, and Willow put her arms around both of them.

        Leaving the question of whether or not they were going to tell sort of moot when Joan opened the door on their three-way embrace. “Oh, um. Sorry. Am I interrupting something?”

        “Not at all,” Alex said. He and his girlfriends—girlfriends! He had to be the luckiest guy in the century—disengaged and went into the house.

        “So I see you three had fun last night,” said Randy as they came into the kitchen. He looked a wreck. He hadn’t changed his suit, and it was creased and slightly stained.

        “What are you…?”

        “You really should learn to shower, Alex,” Randy added. “I have vampire senses. You got both the birds all over you.”

        “What we did last night is none of your business,” Alex said. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”

        “Not unless you were doing it right,” Randy said with a smirk.

        “ _Transire aemulantur tosti. Ego fame pereo_ ,” Anya said from the other side of the island.

        “Excuse me. What what?” Alex asked. He was sure that wasn’t English.

        “ _Patientia, pulchram,_ ” Rupert said as he buttered toast. “ _Manibus plenum._ ”

        “ _Malo te os tuum plenum,_ ” Anya said.

        Randy rolled his eyes. “That’s his line, pet,” he said to Anya. “They’ve been flirting in Latin all morning.”

        “Not just in Latin,” Anya said. “Turns out we both speak tons of languages. French and German and Tibetan and Mandarin Chinese. We realized it last night while we were having sex.”

        “Please, there are children in this house,” Joan said, though Dawn hadn’t emerged yet.

        “I’m a little thin on the ancient Sumerian, but Rupert can’t speak Navajo, so I think we’re just about equal,” Anya added.

        “ _You_ speak Latin, too?” Alex asked Randy. For some reason the idea surprised him.

        “I understand what they’re saying, mostly,” Randy said. “But I couldn’t join in without a phrase book to help with declensions. Guess I’m just a disappointment all around, eh, Pop?”

        “You’re something, all right.”

        “ _Nanika tondemonai mono na no?”_  Anya winked at Rupert.

        “ _‘Mono’ tte shitsurei darou na,_ ” Rupert replied, clicking his tongue.

        “ _Sou na no?_ ” Anya raised her eyebrows. “ _Maa, ‘kaeru no ko wa kaeru.’ Nee, anata?_ ” Anya looked back at the blank stares surrounding her. “We also speak Japanese.”

        A small elephant seemed to thump its way down the stairs, revealing itself to be a very thin Dawn, who shouldn’t have been able to make all that noise. “I see the gang’s all here,” she said as she came into the kitchen. She took some toast off of Rupert’s plate and leaned against the counter. “So what’s our next move?”

        “Well, I was thinking of taking you into the hospital today, Dawn,” Joan told her.

        “Me? Why me?”

        “Well, you’re enrolled in school,” Joan said, “and apparently they have me down as your guardian there, so parents seem to be out of the picture. Tara and Willow can probably fake their college classes, but you could get into big trouble if you don’t know what they’re talking about in high school. So we  _have_  to have an excuse for you, and that means doctors. And if they have any idea what’s wrong with you, maybe that’ll translate to what’s wrong with us. Even me and Randy, who probably shouldn’t be examined by doctors.”

        “But why do  _I_  have to be the one to die on the cross?” Dawn complained. “Why can’t we send Alex in to be poked and prodded?”

        “I have a job,” Alex said. “Someone called me this morning and asked me to move one shift of men to a different job on site. I asked a few questions. Turns out  _I_  am a contractor foreman.” He preened a little.

        “But you don’t know what you’re doing,” Anya pointed out.

        “I can figure it out,” Alex said defensively. “I have the tools, I think I have the skills. Just because I don’t know what they’re doing doesn’t mean I can’t pick it up. Contractors have  _plans_  one can read, after all.”

        “If you have the skill to read them,” Anya said. “You seem kind of simple and dim witted to me.” She didn’t say it as if it were an insult, but as if she was informing him of fresh information that he needed to know. “I think it’s important not to tax your brain too hard.”

         _“Esto bonus, pulchram,_ ” Rupert said gently.

        “ _Puto enim est stultius,_ ” Anya told him.

        Randy laughed wickedly.

        “Can we not fight among ourselves?” Joan asked them all. “We’re all in this together, right? And you two. Speak so all can understand you. There’s to be no secrets between us until we figure out what’s going on.” There was a slightly shamed silence. “Right,” she continued. “Alex, you go to work, and Tara and Willow, go to the college. Act as normal as you can, do classes, build buildings, do whatever. Learn what you can about your lives. Rupert and Anya were going to go back to the magic shop and do more research on that ash we found by the fireplace. Dawn and I will go to the hospital to get Dawn checked out.”

        “And I’ll just twiddle my thumbs, shall I?” Randy asked.

        “You’re going to take a nap,” Joan told him with a quirk of a grin. “You have a date tonight.”

        Randy’s face broke out in the sweetest, shyest smile imaginable, and he looked down at the floor.

        “Besides,” she added. “I want you fresh. We might have to fight off more vampires once it gets dark.”

        “Yes, thank you so much for your optimism, Joan,” Rupert said with quiet sarcasm.

        “I am optimistic,” Joan said. “That Randy and I can protect the rest of us. And that you can figure out what’s wrong with us. Or that the doctors can. Dawn, let’s go.”

        “Let me finish my toast.”

        “Now!”        

       

***

  
  


        It was a grueling ordeal at the hospital. There were hours of tests, scans, more tests, discussions with counselors both with and without Joan present, more tests. The doctors ran the gamut from head trauma to fugue state to drugs to theories about her faking her memory loss. None of the theories held much water. When they accused her of faking it she’d actually burst into tears, and pleaded with Joan for help. “I believe her,” Joan had insisted. “I know her. She’d never make up a story like this.”

        Dawn was grateful, especially since Joan didn’t actually know what she was like. For all she knew, Dawn  _could_  have been the kind of girl to concoct a wild story and stick to it. The fact that Joan and all the others had lost their memories too proved it to Joan, of course, but it was nice to hear her sister stand so staunchly by her.

        But one thing niggled at her. She looked up at her sister during another long period when they left them waiting in the emergency room. “Did you tell the doctors your name was  _Buffy?”_

        Joan looked uncomfortable. “Yeah.”

        “Is that really your name?”

        “Apparently.”

        “Why?” Joan looked at her. “I mean, why Buffy? What a crazy name. What was our mother thinking?”

        “It’s not the worst name,” Joan said.

        “Sounds like something you’d name a dog,” Dawn said.

        “Like your name is better!” Joan said. “You’re just a time of day, not even a person.”

        “I’m a beginning,” Dawn said. “Besides, the dawn is pretty. What’s Buffy even mean?”

        Buffy-or-Joan shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said.

        “I don’t think I can call you Buffy.”

        “Well, call me Joan,” Joan-or-Buffy said. “Randy does.” She regarded Dawn for a while. “Do you like Randy?”

        “In what way?”

        “Well, do you trust him?”

        Dawn considered that for a long moment. “Yeah,” she said with certainty. “Even knowing he’s a vampire, I trust him. Do you?”

        “Yeah,” Joan-or-Buffy said. “I think I do.” She crept in closer. “You know, I found a diary. It says me and Randy have been dating for a really long time.”

        “Yeah?”

        “Since high school.”

        “Well, he is cute.”

        “Do you think so, too?”

        “I do,” Dawn said. “And he feels… I don’t know.  _Right_ , you know? As if he’s part of our group. One of us.”

        “Well, he is one of us,” Buffy-or-Joan said. “We all lost our memories together. It was such a relief to find out that we were together. It was like I didn’t have to pretend anymore, or feel like it was wrong.”

        “Did you feel like that?” Dawn asked.

        “It’s awkward, but there is  _something._ And now I know what that something is. We’re in love.”

        “Do you feel in love?” Dawn asked.

        “I… don’t know. I think… I think I do.” Her face broke out in a sunny smile. “And now we get to fall in love all over again. Kind of exciting, isn’t it?”

        Dawn giggled. “Yeah, it is.” The idea appealed to her. She wanted to get home and see if she kept a diary, too. She looked up at the clock on the wall.  “How long are they going to make us stay here?”

        “I don’t know,” Joan-or-Buffy said. “But I’m starting to think they don’t have any idea what’s wrong with us, either.”

        “You mean wrong with me.”

        “If it happened to you, it happened to us. But I’m really starting to think it’s magic. At least you’ll get an excuse slip out of it. You’re going to school tomorrow.”

        “But I won’t know anything.”

        “We’ll explain that. Come on.” She put her arm around her sister. “We have to make sure I’m a good guardian to you, or they’ll take you away from me.”

        “They wouldn’t do that.”

        “I think they might,” Joan said. “And we Summers girls need to stick together.”

        They stuck together the rest of the day, and didn’t get back until six. The doctors wanted to keep Dawn overnight for observation, but Buffy wouldn’t sign her into the hospital, and since there was nothing physically wrong with the girl they eventually conceded. They gave Joan instructions to keep Dawn in familiar environments, see if her memory could be jogged that way.

        “And nothing more helpful than what we’ve been doing,” Joan said to the others when she caught them up that evening. “Rupert? Anya? What have you come up with at the magic shop?”

        “People give us money,” Anya said with excitement. “I like money. And I know a lot about the things in the shop, though I’m not sure how I know. I must be a very powerful witch.”

        “She does seem to have an instinct for ancient artifacts,” Rupert said. “It’s quite impressive. Every time she said something was some magical talisman of Gallic origin or that willow bark could be used in a pain curse, my research proved it correct. Some, um… difficulty with spellwork itself, really.” He pulled up a book from a bag he’d brought home. “But I seem to be quite gifted at research,” he added. “All the good books are on the second level. I did find some reference to a memory charm that might answer our situation.”

        They all leaned over the book. It was an herbalry. “What’s that? Lethal’s bramble?” Dawn asked from her position on the wrong side of the table.

        “Lethe’s,” Rupert said. “It can be burned in the use of memory and forgetting spells. The ash Anya discovered did seem to correspond, from what I could see of it.”

        “So what does that mean?” Joan asked. “Can we cure this?”

        “Uh, possibly,” Rupert said. “I haven’t done enough research. But it does give one a place to start, doesn’t it?”

        “Who would have cast a spell on us?” Willow asked.

        “My guess would be Anya,” Rupert said, and Anya shrugged without any seeming remorse.

        “Spells go wrong,” she said. “Just because someone makes everyone forget their own names or conjures up hordes of fluffy lagomorphs hungry for our flesh doesn’t mean they’re not a good witch. That’s the price of magic,” she said. “Demons hungry for your souls, or asking you to join their vengeful host is just part and parcel of being a decent sorceress. Sorry,” she added without sounding so.

        “I can’t believe you,” Tara said. “How can you be so cavalier about this? I mean, using magic to play with someone’s memory? That’s like giving them drugs or beating them up. It’s wrong.”

        “How?” Anya asked.

        “You’re taking something away from them,” Randy said. “As much as taking blood or life force. You took our past.”

        “Look, I didn’t mean to,” Anya said. “There might have been reasons. And maybe, just maybe, I was trying to bring  _back_  a lost memory, did that ever occur to you? The herb can be used for both memory  _and_  forgetting. Maybe it just backfired.”

        “Well, until we get our memories back, we can’t know what happened,” Rupert said, taking the book away. “Let us assume that it was a case of mistaken spellwork until we can rule out otherwise. I’ll work from there. If I discover a counter spell Anya and I will try to perform it. In the meantime, we just have to… try to live our lives. Such as they are.”

        “I agree,” Joan said. “We all have lives to live, and I for one am going to live mine to the fullest.”

        Dawn wandered away as the meeting broke up, retreating to her room. She’d been too tired the night before to really explore it. Now she settled down to really poke through the corners of the place. It was important.

        Fifteen minutes later she whooped down the stairs. Anya and Rupert were in the living room, but she found Randy and Joan-or-Buffy in the kitchen. “Buffy, Buffy! I mean Joan!” She clattered into the kitchen. “I found it!”

        “Found what?”

        “I keep a diary! You were right, you are my sister, your name’s Buffy, and we’re sisters, isn’t that great?”

        “Calm down,” Joan said. “That’s great that you found a diary. Is it up to date?”

        “Yeah, I think so,” Dawn said. “But some of the dates are just Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and I don’t know  _which_ Monday, Thursday, whatever. And I think there’s more than just one, I have a whole shelf of notebooks up there. Some of them got burned around the edges, I don’t know what did that yet, but—”

        “Calm down!” Joan said again.

        “You have a diary?” Anya said, coming in. “Hand it over.”

        “No!” Dawn snatched the journal close to her chest.

        “Dawn,” Buffy-or-Joan said.

        “But it’s private,” Dawn said. “And it’s mine. You don’t want everyone reading  _your_  diary, do you?” she asked Joan.

        “You have a diary too?” Anya asked pointedly. “When were you going to tell us that?”

        “It’s out of date,” Joan said quickly. “And I’d have mentioned it.”

        “It’s a bit personal, love,” Randy said to Anya.

        “Exactly,” said Dawn, glad Randy at least understood. “Look, I’ll tell you the important things when I’ve finished reading it, okay? We can meet up tomorrow, and I’ll tell everyone what I learn.”

        “That sounds fair,” Joan said. “Tomorrow morning enough time to go through it?”

        “I think so.”

        “Then I’ll call Alex and tell them to come over in the morning. And you have homework, young lady,” Joan said. She grabbed a soda out of the fridge and put it in Dawn’s hand. “Get studying.”

        “Right!” Dawn headed up the stairs with a new sense of importance.

***           

 

 

        “So what do we do?”

        Joan stood sort of helplessly with Randy on the front porch. “Well. This is a date, right? What do people do on dates?”

        “You know… I have no idea.”

        “I don’t know what’s in this town. Maybe… don’t people go to movies or something?”

        “We don’t know what’s playing. Or when it would be playing. Or where the movie theater is. Or if there is one,” Randy pointed out. “Do you feel like a movie?”

        It didn’t sound like something either of them would like. “No.”

        “We could go out to eat something,” Randy said.

        “You eat blood.”

        “Yeah,” Randy said, looking crestfallen. “I could try to eat real food, I guess.”

        “What if it makes you sick?”

        “The blood kind of makes me sick,” Randy said with a sigh.

        “It does?”

        “Hunting was… bloody ugly, and I was only going after tiny animals. Maybe I mostly eat human food. I don’t know. I could try.”

        “Maybe not the best experience to try on a first date, though,” Joan said.

        “No, probably not.”

        Another dull silence.

        Joan tossed her head. “This is stupid. We’re young, we’re free, we have super powers, we can do anything we want.”

        “Yeah, but what do we want?” Randy asked.

        “And that’s what we don’t know,” Joan said.

        Randy suddenly held out his arm gallantly. “Would you care to go for a stroll, miss?”

        Joan laughed. She placed her hand on his arm. “Sounds delightful.”

        They set off across the neighborhood. Randy made banal comments on the evening weather and people’s gardens. It was pleasant enough, but it felt strange.

        “All right, is it me, or is this weird?” Joan finally asked.

        “It’s weird,” Randy said.

        Joan took her hand off his arm and slid it into his hand. “How are you managing in the basement?”

        Randy took in a breath and then sighed. “All right, I guess. It’s a bit Spartan down there. I… don’t think it’s where I lived.”

        “Why not?”

        “Well, there was an old cot folded up down there, but it smelled musty. It’s not set up for anyone to live in, and I don’t have any clothes. Can’t be my flat.”

        “Where do you think you lived?”

        “No idea,” Randy said. “Maybe some coffin or crypt like a real vampire.” He squeezed her hand suddenly and stopped walking. “Joan? You know I’m very fond of you.”

        “I’m… fond of you too,” Joan said, her voice sounding very small.

        “I’m worried about… things.”

        “What things?”

        “You and me. Us. What I did to you… before, in that journal. Wasn’t right.”

        “Well… we stuck through it. I stuck it out, you stuck it out. And we’re still together now, aren’t we?”

        “But how can we do this when we don’t even remember our lives together?”

        “Doesn’t seem to have stopped Anya and Rupert. Or Willow, Tara and Alex, for that matter.”

        “That’s true,” Randy said. He started them walking again.

        “I think you were right, before. About trying to fill the blank spaces. Hoping to reach out. Make a connection in all that emptiness.”

        “Do you think that’s what we’re doing?”

        “I’m trying to recapture something that has been taken from me,” Joan said. “I refuse to let you go just because it’s going to be hard, or because I can’t remember it.” She looked up at him. “You have no clothes down there?”

        “Nothing. Piles of laundry, but it looks like it all belongs to you birds.”

        “So that’s why you’re still in that suit.”

        “I tried to press the jacket,” he said.

        “I know what we’ll do,” Joan said. “We’ll go get you some clothes.”

        “It’s dark. Is there any place open?”

        “There’s got to be a department store or something. Let’s go back to the house, I’ll check the phone book. Maybe Rupert has some money….”

        “I got some dosh,” Rupert said. “Not a lot, just a bit in my pocket.”

        “But no ID?”

        “None.”

        “I saw some cash by the front dresser. You can’t keep wearing the same suit every day. You’re looking a bit worse for wear.”

        “Noticed, did you?”

        They raided the house for money, only to have Rupert tell them to put their money aside. He handed them his credit card. “I called to check my finances today,” he said. “Apparently I’m quite well off. And clothes for my son is a good cause.”

        “Toasty,” Joan said. She took the credit card and called a taxi. Twenty minutes later they walked into a department store, and Joan led Randy toward the men’s section. “Now. What are we going to dress you in?” She grabbed a pale button up and held it up to Randy. “How does that look?”

        Randy stared into the mirror at Joan holding a shirt up against the empty air. “Disturbing,” he said. “I’m going to have to take your word for it.”

        “Oh, shoot, I forgot,” Joan said. “Well, all right, I’ll be your mirror.” She piled a handful of clothes into Randy’s hands and sent him into the dressing room. “Come back out when you’re done, and we’ll see how you look.”

        Randy disappeared behind the flimsy partition door and came back out a few minutes later in a white button down shirt and khakis. “What do you think?” he asked.

        “I don’t know,” Joan said, considering. “I don’t know if that’s really you.”

        “What do you think is me?”

        “I don’t know,” she said, and laughed. “Go back in and try on another.”

        Randy went back in and came out again in a polo shirt and black pants. “Too casual,” she said. “Try again.”

        He went in again and again, coming back out at first with an air of amusement, then slowly getting into it. He’d emerge with a flourish, perform a few dance moves, spin around with his arms out. Joan would collect more clothes, press them into his arms, send him back in. He’d complain or comment or pick out entirely inappropriate garb, bright sports shirts or Hawaiian prints. Once he came out wearing a Tweety Bird T-shirt that read, “I tawt I taw a puddy tat!” Joan nearly choked with laughter at that one.

        “Okay, hang on,” Randy said, and disappeared into the changing room again. “Let’s see what you think of this.”

        “I think you’re enjoying this way too much,” Joan said, laughing.

        “How about…  _this_ ,” he said, opening the door wide.

        He wore an open jewel tone shirt and black jeans, with a hat he’d picked up from the top of some display. He leaned against the edge of the door, the hat tilted rakishly, and looked down at her from narrowed eyes. “Hey there, pet,” he said in throaty whisper. “How you doing?”

        Joan stared. His chest was  _cut_. She realized after a moment that her mouth was hanging open, and she shut it. “Um,” she said. “A little too good.”

        “Yeah?” He snuck up on her and pulled her up against him. Right up against him, she could feel part of his anatomy against her hip. “You look pretty good to me, too, love.”

        It felt right. The awkwardness had faded in the intimacy of dressing him like a doll, and Joan felt a sudden and inexplicable relief. It was as if she’d just passed some hurdle in their new relationship, and she felt herself sag against him. She buried her head in his shoulder and just held him for a long moment. Randy paused and then wrapped his arms around her, and they stood in the bright fluorescent lights, secure together, breathing each other in.

        “I think we’ve found enough,” Joan said quietly into his bare chest.

        “All right by me,” Randy said.

        Joan pulled away and set about buttoning his new shirt, her fingers like moths against his chest. “Let’s check out housewares, see if we can make that basement a little nicer for you.”

        “But we know that’s not where I live.”

        “It is until further notice,” Joan said. “We can at least get some carpets, a mirror, brighten the place up.”

        “Better go for a lamp,” Randy said. “I’d rather not have a mirror.”

        “Right. Lamp, a closet fixture, something to hang your new clothes on. A couple throw pillows, it’ll be great.”

        “After you, my angel,” Randy said.

        Joan stood up on tiptoes and kissed him warmly on the mouth. She breathed his scent in as she did it, and it was like smoky caramel. “I thought that was my line,” she whispered.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

        Dawn didn’t know what to do.

        She closed the last page of the last readable journal, and chewed on her lip. She was very glad she hadn’t let anyone else read the journals, but now she didn’t know how to break it to them.

        None of them were who they thought they were.

        Even Dawn wasn’t who she thought she was. Some of what she read about being a key and all still didn’t make sense to her, and it hardly mattered now, apparently. But other parts that she’d read, bits about Buffy dying, and about dangerous monsters, and the death of her own mother. All of that had been terrible to read. Buffy’s depression, Willow’s new fascination with magic, Giles’s distance. It all seemed so wrong. She was reading about a life, and all the lives that had been touching her, slowly falling apart.

        Dawn felt awful. She wished she hadn’t read any of it. And she also wished she didn’t have to tell them the truth.

        Anya was with Xander, not with Rupert. Willow and Tara weren’t part of a trio with Alex. Rupert was sort of apart from them, something called a watcher, who always stood a little aloof and had even left their team, once. And as for Randy…

        She knew she had to tell Randy. It was really late, but Randy was probably awake still, since he was a vampire and all. She hadn’t heard Randy and Joan come in, but she’d been very wrapped up in her journals, and getting annoyed at her handwriting, and basically being distracted. It was nearly five in the morning. She  _had_ to tell Randy and Joan the truth before something actually happened between them.  

        The lights were still on downstairs. Dawn frowned and turned toward the door to the basement, opening it quietly. She didn’t want to wake Joan or Rupert. “Randy?” she whispered as she tiptoed down the stairs. “Randy, I need to talk….”

        She stopped. The room looked different. Some new throw-rug type carpets were heaped up by the cot near the washing machine. There were bags with a department store logo flung all over, and bright new clothes with tags hanging off them were scattered over the floor. A brand new lamp was blaring yellow light over what had been the darkest corner of the basement. And on the floor, curled up in the carpets, were Randy and Joan, at least half naked, in a tangle of arms and legs.

        Well, so much for getting to them before something happened.

        Dawn watched them breathing together for a long moment, and then turned around and tiptoed back up the stairs again. What was she going to do? Tell them they were enemies? Tell them that their truce only relied on an electronic chip and a sense of necessity? Tell them that Spike had no soul? Because that was the truth. Randy had never been Buffy’s “angel.” Randy was Spike, and even though Spike had a crush on Buffy, it had never been reciprocated. He and Buffy had never been dating. They were enemies and uneasy allies. And now they were in each other’s arms.

        Dawn crept back into the kitchen and sat nervously at the counter, trying to think of what to do. She had to tell them. They were expecting her to tell them. It wasn’t as if she could lie.

        Was it? Nothing was stopping her from lying. What did it matter who everyone was with, after all? She couldn’t remember anything, really, and neither could they. They seemed happy enough, with their rewritten lives. And none of them would be happy if she told them what had been real, and that everything they had now wasn’t.

        Well, wait a minute. Who said it wasn’t? Who said their new relationships couldn’t be real? They seemed real to her, what she’d seen of them. Randy and Joan curled up together snugly in the basement. Willow, Alex and Tara cuddled together in the kitchen, lending each other strength. And Rupert and Anya going at it like rabbits in the main bedroom. All of that seemed like a happy ending for each of them.

        Dawn tiptoed quickly back upstairs and collected every one of her journals, particularly the ones on Buffy and Angel, and the most recent one where Buffy came back to life. She was tempted to burn them, an impulse she’d had once before, according to one of the journals, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. Instead she stuffed them into a shopping bag and carried them to her closet. There was a tiny door in there by the floor that led to a crawl space under the porch roof. She had to throw everything out of her closet to make the crawl space accessible, and she had to wrestle with the warped door to make it open, but she made it. She shoved the written memories into the dark hole, and closed the door firmly on them. Then she piled everything back into the closet, making everything even messier than it had been before she’d started.

        There. Now the written memories were locked away, just like the real ones.

        Now they could start writing new memories.

 

***

 

        Joan woke up first, sore from sleeping on the hard floor. And a few other reasons. She was cuddled up against a body warmed through from her own body heat. She’d pillowed her head on his shoulder, and he was breathing deeply. He didn’t look dead. He hadn’t felt dead last night.

        She traced her hand lightly over his chest, and after a few moments of this tickling touch, he opened his blue eyes. “Hey,” Randy said. “That was one hell of a first date.”

        “It would seem,” Joan said, “that we haven’t forgotten everything.”

        “We had this nicely sorted, true enough,” Randy said. He pulled Joan on top of him and rested his hands on her hips. “Glad we were at the right store.”

        “That is one of the great things about those places,” Joan said. “One stop shops.”

        They hadn’t known if they actually needed condoms, given vampire anatomy, but after things had gotten heated in the throw pillows at housewares, they’d decided to check out the pharmacy section, anyway. Until they knew more about how everything worked, it was better to be safe than sorry. “We don’t have to use them, after all,” Randy said as he placed them on the check out conveyor belt with his new clothes. Joan had been carrying the carpets and the lamp over her shoulder. “We can just have them just in case.”

        “Just in case” had turned out to be, “almost as soon as we get into the basement.” It had started with Joan arguing that it was high time they got him out of that suit. He’d changed back into it after they’d picked out all the clothes they were keeping. She blushed when she realized what she’d said. “I mean get you into something more comfortable,” she said, and then realized that was a euphemism, too. “I mean, get you… I mean… I….”

        Randy had laughed, abandoned the carpets he’d been trying to lay out, and pulled her close for a kiss. Which turned into more than a kiss, which then turned into more than more than a kiss, which had turned into getting him decidedly out of that suit, which had turned into being curled up with him in the carpets in the basement as if they’d been doing this together all their lives.  

        It had been hesitant at first. Two virgins rediscovering themselves as much as each other. But sex was fairly instinctive, and if nothing else they both knew how it worked. Randy had been a surprisingly generous lover, giving her pleasure with a hunger that made her entire body tingle. It had been gentle at first, but after they’d warmed up it grew stronger, almost violent, with a power between them that could not be denied. Now Joan felt warm and sore and content, a kind of happiness she hadn’t expected to feel in her confusion and her emptiness. Now she was sure of it, why the others had fallen in with each other so quickly. When there were no complications or histories in the way, it felt wonderful to just  _connect_ , and connect quickly, with the ones you loved.

         _I do love him,_  she realized. It was a surprisingly easy realization. It wasn’t just something she’d read in an old diary. She could tell, as she curled up beside this near perfect stranger, that she loved him with all her being. It ran deep, it was ingrained. She loved him.

        “I love you,” Randy whispered as he nuzzled the top of her head. “I hope that’s all right.”

        “I love you, too,” Joan whispered into his chest. She knew he heard by the way he kissed her hair.

        A clatter from the kitchen made them look up at the stairs.

        “We’d better get up there,” Joan said. “Dawn doesn’t have much time to talk to us before school.”

        It still took them a little time before they managed to disentangle themselves from each other and make it up the stairs. They were both, at it turned out, very keen on one-last-kisses. They found everyone already waiting in the kitchen when they climbed up the stairs. Randy wore his new clothes, a button up shirt and a pair of khaki pants. Joan had raided the clean laundry and managed to find a shirt that didn’t make it look as if she’d come upstairs wearing the same clothes she had on last night. No one looked fooled as they came in together.

        No one looked disapproving, either.

        “So what’s the sitch?” Joan asked as she came in. Dawn was busily munching on a bowl of corn flakes, and Tara was cooking eggs on the stove. An empty plate was already beside Dawn’s bowl. “What did you find out from your diaries?”

        “Not a lot,” Dawn said casually. “My best friend’s name is Janice, and I hate fifth period PE.”

        Joan felt a little condescending. “That’s great, Dawn, but what about us? How about our lives? What do we do? Do you know where Randy lives?”

        “Nope,” Dawn said. “Look, I don’t have time to get into it now. Alex says he’s going to drive me to school. You have the doctor’s slip?”

        “Yeah,” Joan said, and she pulled it from the refrigerator where she’d clipped it. “I think I’d better go with you to school.”

        “Okay, but we’d better hurry. Alex has a car,” Dawn said, and snatched the note out of Joan’s hand. “The diary says he drives me to school most mornings. I’ll tell you guys all about it when I get out.” She abandoned her half eaten corn flakes and ran out of the room as if Randy was about to bite her. “Come on, Alex! Get your butt in gear! I don’t want to be late.”

        “She wasn’t this keen on school yesterday,” Joan said. “I guess we’ll have our crew rally later.”

        Dawn was strangely perky in the car on the way to the school, singing along with the radio and refusing to answer any questions about what she found in her diaries. “It’s really complicated,” was all she said. “I don’t want to get into it without everyone there, all right?”

        Joan sorted out Dawn’s excuses for school, and then let Alex drive her home. Unable to restrain her curiosity, she slipped up to Dawn’s room, thinking she’d just take a peek at one of the journals, but they were nowhere to be found. That worried her. She went back downstairs. “What’s up?” Randy asked as she came into the living room. He looked really good in his new clothes.

        “Shouldn’t you be in the basement?”

        “Eh, your curtains are good,” Randy said. “You okay?”

        “I’m worried about what Dawn’s found,” Joan said. “Maybe she doesn’t approve of us.”

        “Or maybe she does,” Randy said. “And doesn’t want us to know something ugly. Like what we were like when we started.”

        Joan stepped into his ready embrace. “We are where we are now,” she said. “And I know I love you.”

        “Works nicely, that,” Randy said. “I happen to love you, too.”

        But like everyone else, they had to wait until that afternoon for Dawn to explain what she found in her journals.

        Dawn had spent the day at school ignoring what most of the teachers said. After all, she didn’t even know what unit they were on, let alone what was supposed to be on the tests. Some of the teachers were understanding or sympathetic to her condition, but most of them seemed entirely indifferent. Dawn got the feeling she wasn’t a good student. Her friends also didn’t seem particularly bothered by her supposed blackout. Only Janice showed any concern. The others muttered something under their breath about Crazy Dawn, and went on with their lives.

         _I must have been a total spaz cake,_  she realized.

        That made it even more important for her not to lose her blank-slate family, and alienate them with her insider knowledge. She spent hours trying to formulate the perfect lies, but they mostly fell out of her head the moment she sat down. She realized she was going to have to wing it.

        “So my journals mostly talked about school,” Dawn explained when they finally made her sit down at the dining room table and start dishing that evening. “So you’ll have to understand, guys. I don’t know as much as I hoped.”

        “Well, I already know I’m a vampire slayer,” Joan said. “And, uh…” she looked around the table. “And my name’s Buffy,” she added in a tiny voice.”

        There was a quiet moment. “ _Buff_ y?” Rupert said in his crisp British accent.

        “She prefers Joan,” Randy said sharply. “Anyone got a problem with that?”

        Something about his tone made everyone agree quickly that no, absolutely, they were not going to argue the slayer or the vampire about a name.

        “Right,” Dawn said. “You’re a vampire slayer, and you go out every night patrolling the graveyards, slaying vampires. It’s really cool.”

        “So I am like a superhero,” Joan said to everyone, confirming Dawn’s report.

        “You totally are,” Dawn said.

        “What about the rest of our family?”

        “Our… mother died a couple years ago,” Dawn said. “But it was peaceful and we expected it, and we got to say goodbye.”  

        “That’s sad,” Joan said.

        “But it totally wasn’t a shock or anything. We’re good with it.”

        “What about our dad?”

        “He’s traveling,” Dawn said. She’d been tempted to say he was dead, too, but she didn’t want to be caught in a lie should he suddenly call the house. “It’s okay. We’ve never been close to him.” That was easier than to say that they missed him and his sudden abandonment had really shaken both girls to their core. Instead she turned to Alex. “So Alex. You and Willow were Joan’s friends in high school. And you are the most understanding guy,” she said. “You’re really sweet and funny and it’s hard not to like you. You and Randy are best guy friends,” she added.

        “We are?” Randy asked.

        “Cool,” said Alex. “So we, what… watch football together?”

        “You play pool,” Dawn said, remembering something about that in one of her journals.

        “I can see that,” Randy said.

        “Who… I mean Willow and I are together?” Alex said carefully.

        Though they hadn’t exactly been announcing they were a threesome, Dawn had picked up enough of their talk to figure it out. She had liked Willow and Tara together, according to her journals, but the idea of leaving Alex out in the cold with the whole Anya debacle worried her. She figured they’d sorted that out best on their own.

        “You totally are together,” Dawn said, “and Tara’s part of it. Willow and Tara are like the bestest couple ever, and you, um, you really complement them. You two were together first,” she said of Alex and Willow. “You’ve been friends since forever. Started dating in high school. Tara came in later.”

        “And I’m… happy with them?” Tara asked.

        “Oh, yeah, you love it,” Dawn said with assurance. “You had an abusive family that tried to take you away once, and Alex punched one of them out.” She was taking severe license with that particular incident, but she wanted to give Tara a reason to love Alex, too.

        “That’s so sweet,” Tara said to Alex.

        Alex looked embarrassed and proud.

        “And everyone’s okay with this arrangement?” Willow asked. “I mean… it is a little… unconventional.”

        “It’s not anyone’s business, is it?” Randy asked. “Just you three.”

        “Good point,” Alex said.

        “Okay,” Tara said. “That’s g-good to know. And am… I a witch?”

        “You are,” Dawn said quickly. “Willow isn’t. Willow’s only interested in computers.”

        “I do like my computer,” Willow said.

        “You’re scared of magic,” Dawn said. “But you love Tara, anyway.”

        Willow took Tara’s hand and held it tight. They smiled at one another, and Alex added his hand to the pile. It was really sweet. Dawn smiled. She was doing it right!

        “What about us?” Anya said, hitting Rupert in the chest. “How long have we been engaged?”

        “Ages,” Dawn said turning to them. “You should get married already.”

        “And I’m a witch, right?” Anya asked.

        “Well….” Dawn hadn’t decided whether to admit that Anya was a thousand year old ex-vengeance demon. She had a lot of lies to spin. She decided truth was probably the best bet, here. “You used to be,” she said. “But you were turned into a vengeance demon after you cursed your boyfriend. That was like a thousand years ago, but then you lost your powers and became human after a curse you did on Alex failed.”

        “What was she cursing me for?”

        “Uh…” She’d said too much. “You and Willow were fighting. You made up, though,” she said. “And Anya become one of our friends.”

        “That’s why I know everything,” Anya said decisively. “I’m a thousand years old. That must be why you love me,” she said to Rupert.

        “It totally is,” Dawn said. “Rupert, you’re a watcher. You watch demons. And Buffy. I mean Joan. You help Joan fight demons. Not ex-demons, like Anya, just demons.”

        “What about me?” Randy said.

        “You fight demons, too. You work with Joan. You have a soul – Rupert gave you a soul, as a gift. And it makes you a good vampire. A really, really good vampire. You’ve saved my life,” she said. “You and Joan are madly in love.” And this time the lie caught in her throat. “You’re so… so happy together.” And to her own surprise, she started to tear up.

        “What’s the matter, honey?” Tara asked.

        “I’m sorry,” Dawn said. She had to come up with something. Not just that she was lying about a life that was full of pain and loneliness where nothing was working out and no one was really happy. “It was just… reading all that, and knowing… knowing how happy we all were….”

        Joan put her arms around her. “It’s all right. We’ll find our memories again,” she said.

        “No!” Dawn said. Then she caught herself. “I mean, it would be great if we found our memories, but… we can make it all happy anyway, you know? We can make our lives work even if we don’t remember. I think… we just need to… press on.”

        “Little bit’s right,” Randy said. “Just because I don’t remember that life doesn’t mean I can’t keep living it. Or living undead in it,” he said.

        “I agree,” Joan said. “We have good lives, useful lives. Lives that we don’t have to give up on. I can still go patrolling. You can still be a witch,” she said to Anya. “Randy and I can still be together.”

        “We don’t need our memories,” Willow said.

        “Well, perhaps we don’t,” Rupert said, after clearing his throat. “I think I’ve found the spell we’re under, though.”

        “You have?” Joan asked.

        “Yes. I’m certain now that it was a spell augmented by Lethe’s Bramble, but the version that I researched requires a crystal catalyst. The crystal acts as a reflection of our memories. It starts out clear, and then becomes clouded. If we can find and destroy the crystal, then our memories should come back.”

        “But how can we find this crystal?” Alex asked.

        “That is what I don’t know,” Rupert said. “None of us had one on them when we emptied our pockets, did we?”

        There was a general murmur and shake of heads.

        “Well, then we’re on our own until we can find some way to track that crystal,” Joan said. “Anya, do you think you can find a way to do that in your magic shop?”

        “Rupert can find it,” Anya said. “I’ve been too busy making money.” She cringed a little as she realized the tone in the room. “But, uh, I can help,” she added.

        “All right, then,” Joan said. “I guess that’s it. Until we find this supposed crystal, all we can do is just… live our lives.” She put her arm around Randy and grinned at all of them. “And you know what? I for one am looking forward to it.”

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

        Living a life. Rupert always wondered what would have happened if they’d just let the whole idea go, and lived their lives as Joan and Dawn had suggested.

        Instead they created the spell. Tara discovered it, searching through books with Anya, who was not good at studying. She collected all of the group of friends together and pinpointed the essence of the memory spell. With Anya’s help they had arranged for what Tara called a twinkle bee to search Sunnydale. When it found an object that had the same signature as the memory spell, it would show up as a mark on the Sunnydale map.

        First the twinkle bee searched their homes, the college, the obvious places, but there was nothing. There had been a faint trace in the Magic Box itself, but the search wasn’t as direct as it would be trying to detect a living being. Tara had to let the bee loose and let it start in a full grid, which was going to be slow going. Weeks, in fact. Weeks, and then months. A long time for a life to continue.

        It was a good life. A truly blessed life, really. Randy and Joan went patrolling every night after midnight, as the diaries had said they should. They’d come back with dust on their shoulders and smiles on their faces. They would retreat to the basement where what happened was often not quiet enough to ignore, but no one in the household minded. They were usually quieter than Rupert and Anya.

        Dawn was given an individuated education plan to help her catch up after her memory disorder. In the two months since she’d had it her grades had apparently climbed from a C to a B+, and that was without the grounding she had had earlier in the year. Apparently she’d needed a tutor before she lost her memory, and the extra help was solving all her academic troubles.

        Willow and Tara worked well in their college courses. Alex drove them about like a devoted and well beloved terrier. Willow came over to the Magic Box in the afternoons to catalog demons in her computer, and to keep Tara company as she worked together with Anya to find the missing crystal matrix.

        Anya set a date for the wedding. She wanted it in the spring, when the flowers were blooming.

        Willow and Tara scheduled classes for their next term.

        Joan realized that since she was supposed to be Dawn’s guardian she had to look like a productive and responsible parent, so she looked for a job. She finally found one in security, landing a job as a swing shift watchman at the museum, after their old watchman was frozen in the line of duty. She was off duty in time to do her patrol rounds with Randy.

        Randy found a butcher willing to sell him blood, so he didn’t have to hunt anymore, or at least not as much. He and Dawn played board games in the evening, and he helped her with her homework. He was good at history and English, not so much with science or math.

        And Rupert ran the Magic Box, researching old dusty tomes and listening to the vinyl records he found in storage in the basement. It was all very domestic and happy. Until he stumbled upon the wrong tome.

 

***

        He went home early from the Magic Box in order to catch Dawn when she got home from school. He waited for her in the kitchen, holding the little book in his hand. Randy was asleep downstairs, but Anya was still at the magic shop, and Joan was already out for her shift at the museum.

        “What’s up?” Dawn asked when she saw him. “Why aren’t you at the Magic Box?”

        “I’ve been doing some research,” Rupert said quietly. “Did you know that watchers are meant to keep records?”

        “Are they?” Dawn said lightly. “Sounds right.”

        “Yes. I’ve been looking through the various books I have at the Magic Box. I happened to stumble upon some recorded journals.”

        “You did?” Dawn said.

        She wasn’t looking guilty.

        “Dawn,” he said. “You knew, didn’t you?”

        “Knew what?” She pushed past him and grabbed open a cupboard for a water glass.

        The girl was hedging. Rupert stepped between her and the counter, forcing her to look at him. “Dawn,” he hissed, hoping not to wake Randy. “I know what you told us was false.”

        “No it wasn’t,” Dawn said.

        “I discovered my own journals, Dawn,” he insisted. “Watcher records. It doesn’t go into great detail about personal lives or relationships, but I know one thing. Angel was the vampire with the soul, and he’s in Los Angeles. The vampire living in Sunnydale with us was called Spike, and is only held in any regard by us because his violent tendencies are kept in check by a chip in his head.”

        Dawn went white, but her expression held steady. “Yeah, and?”

        “And Willow was a witch. A very powerful one, much more powerful than Tara. And Joan… Buffy. You know what happened to her.”

        “So?”

        “You have misrepresented the facts as presented,” Rupert hissed. “You lied to us!”

        “Who says it’s a lie?” Dawn said, pulling away from Rupert. “What did I tell you? That Randy and Joan are in love. That’s true. That Alex and Willow and Tara are all together and happy. That’s true. That me and Joan are family, and Randy and you are family, and Randy’s basically my big brother and you and me and all the rest of us are friends and family and together. All of that is true.”

        “And myself and Anya?”

        “I said you’re in love and should get married,” Dawn said. “Why can’t that be true? Why can’t all of it be true?”

        “But it  _isn’t_  true.”

        “Yes it is!” Dawn insisted. “It is now.”

        “But it wasn’t true before,” Rupert said.

        “Well, it’s true now,” Dawn said. “It was true when I said it was true.”

        “That was only two days after we lost our memories!”

        “So?” Dawn said. “It was true then, and it’s true now. So it wasn’t true before that. Who’s to say that one truth is more true than another truth? I liked our truth. Our truth was good, it was happy. The other truth, it wasn’t happy.”

        “But it was the reality,” Rupert insisted.

        “It was miserable,” Dawn said. “It was killing us. Willow was going crazy mad with magic, she and Tara were going to break up. Did your journal tell you that?”

        It had said something about Willow going too deeply into the dark magics.

        “Spike had been really close to us, and then when Buffy came back they pretty much kicked him out. That wasn’t right. Did your journal tell you that, too?”

        It hadn’t mentioned Spike as being part of the inner circle any longer.

        “And Alex and Anya were fighting, and you were leaving and lonely, and Buffy… Buffy was dead!”

        “She had been brought back to life,” Rupert said, but Dawn scoffed.

        “She was miserable!” Dawn said. “She was staring into space and crying at night and she couldn’t see the world as anything but hell. She was lonely and frightened and sad. Our parents were gone, Mom’s death was a shock, Dad abandoned us to our fate, Buffy’d had two boyfriends who broke her heart. Now she’s got someone who loves her, and will always be there for her, and will fight to protect her forever. And will protect me! Don’t you see, I’ve got a proper family now, with you here, and Randy, and Joan. Did you want me to break everyone’s heart and throw that away just because it hadn’t been true two days before? No!” She shook her head defiantly. “I told the truth. I told the truth I could see. I told the truth as it was, the world rewritten, and written better! I’m not going to tell what is a lie now, just because it was the truth back then.”

        “But we can’t pretend the lie we’re living is the truth, either,” Rupert said. “That grid spell has already narrowed in on the crystal. We will find it eventually. What are we meant to do? Continue our lies in the face of our true memories?”

        “Sabotage the grid,” Dawn said. “Don’t find the crystal. Just let it all continue. Think about it, if we get our memories back, what’s going to happen? Joan will be almost suicidal again. Tara and Willow will break up, we’ll lose Tara completely. Randy won’t think he has a soul anymore, and he’ll want to be evil. Alex and Anya won’t stay together after what’s happened now, they’ll be alone, too. And you’ll be alone again.” She reached out and touched his shoulder. “Don’t you love Anya?”

        Rupert paused. Something squirmed in the pit of his stomach. When Dawn had first declared their assumed truths to all be real, something hadn’t felt quite right to him. He had not loved Anya, despite her appetites in the bedroom and what they had already done there. Why had he indulged her, though? Because she was pretty and seductive and insistent, and because he was not as old as these children around him seemed to think. And those appetites of the ex-vengeance demon had begun to grow on him, and now the idea of abandoning her seemed… cold. Not just to her, but to himself.

        He didn’t like the idea of going upstairs to an empty bed tonight, based on a few lines of scribbled journal.

        “But it isn’t right to condemn the others the loss of their memories,” he said finally. “Things may have been troubled, but they had whole lives, childhoods, friendships. It isn’t right to take all of those things away just because we were in a rough patch.”

        “I didn’t take it away,” Dawn said. “I didn’t have the power to put it back. I could only let us keep hold of what we’d found, don’t you get that?”

        Rupert looked down.

        “Are you going to take it away from them?”

        There was a dark silence. “No,” he finally said. “I shan’t take it away. But I also shan’t condemn the whole of us to victimhood. The others want their memories back.”

        “That’s because they don’t know.”

        “That is  _precisely_  because they don’t know,” Rupert said. “I shan’t rid them of their misconceptions, not even Anya and myself, but I cannot condone disabling or even delaying the grid search. If the crystal is found, we will return the stolen memories, as is right.”

        “What if the crystal isn’t found?”

        “Then it’s none of our concern,” Rupert said. “I suppose… in that case, your impulse is as valid as mine.” He sighed and rubbed at his forehead. “We will continue to live our lives until such time as the truth must be let out.”

        Dawn relaxed with a sigh. “Thank you, Rupert. You don’t know what that means to me.”

        “I can imagine,” Rupert said. The phone rang. Rupert picked it up. “Summers residence.”

        “Rupert, we found it!” Anya said over the phone. “The crystal! It’s in the sewers under the Magic Box! I already called Alex and the others to help look!”

        Rupert sighed. “Thank you, Anya,” he said duly. “We’ll be right over.”

        He took off his glasses to clean them, his unfocused gaze directed at Dawn. “Well,” he said. “So much for differing truths.”

 

***

 

        “It doesn’t look like much,” said Alex.

        The black crystal sat innocuously on the table at the Magic Box, glinting a little in the light. It hadn’t taken long to find it once they made it to the correct sewer chamber. Randy had picked it up and they carried it back to the shop. Now they all felt a little intimidated.

        “So what do we do with it?” Randy asked.

        “I’m not sure,” Anya said.

        “It should be fairly easy to break the spell,” Rupert said quietly. “All we need do is to break the crystal.”

        “We… don’t have to,” Dawn said.

        Everyone looked at her.

        “Just… just saying,” Dawn said quickly. “I mean… isn’t anyone else scared?”

        “I’m terrified,” Willow said frankly. “That thing puts a chill up my spine.”

        Tara reached out and touched the offending spine, rubbing Willow’s back comfortingly. “It should be okay, honey,” she said. “We’ll get everything back. Everything we don’t know.”

        “Will we keep our memories?” Randy asked quietly. “Everything we’ve done these last months. Will we still have that?”

        “The spell is a cloud,” Tara said. “Lifting it shouldn’t affect the memories we’ve made since. We should still have them.”

        “I’m not scared,” Joan said firmly. “Look, everyone. I had my life stolen from me. I want it back.”

        “I’m with Joan,” Alex said.

        “Well, of course we want our memories back,” Willow said. “I’m just… scared.”

        “Will it hurt?” Dawn asked.

        “I think we should all sit down,” Rupert said evenly. “It may be quite a shock when our old lives return to us.”

        They all pulled up chairs and sat on the benches surrounding the table.

        “Joan. I believe there to be a mace in the gymnasium. Will you do the honors?” Rupert asked.

        “Be right back,” Joan said.

        Dawn stared at the crystal on the table. She considered snatching it up and running away with it, hiding from the others until she could throw the crystal in the ocean. Rupert caught her eyes and held them with his. With the faintest shake of his head he told her it wouldn’t be any use. She closed her eyes and swallowed.

        Joan returned with her mace. “All right everyone,” she said, sitting down again. “Brace yourselves.”

        She brought the mace firmly down on the black crystal.

        The group sat in a circle around the table staring at the shattered remnants, waiting for memories to come back. At first nothing seemed to happen at all. There was a brief moment of deep confusion. And then it hit them all at the same time.

        Alex remembered he was Xander. Xander who was supposed to marry Anya, a commitment he knew he was not ready for. And now he’d been with Willow and Tara, doing things he’d never thought he’d have a chance to do, and Anya… she had been doing all this…  _stuff_ with Giles – Giles, for Pete’s sake! And not just the bed stuff, but the bantering in foreign languages and the historical context stuff, and none of that would go away. It was all part and parcel of who Anya was,  _what_  Anya was, something he’d never been able to allow himself to accept. The fact was that even though he had loved her, he had never really understood or accepted Anya.

        Anya herself stared at Xander, horrified. She had been with Xander, not Rupert. Rupert of the inventive sex positions and the fondness for ripping her clothes off and the staggering intelligence and the fascination with demons. And now Xander had cheated on her with a pair of lesbians, one of them Willow – and she hated that one of them was Willow. Her vengeance demon memory surged up inside her and insisted that he needed to be punished for what he’d done. But she didn’t want to punish him. She felt torn. And she’d been with Rupert, after all…. She looked over at Rupert beside her. Rupert Giles, whom she’d never have sex with again.

        Giles remembered why he had been leaving. That he was responsible for these children which had somehow fallen under his care, and he remembered he was failing. He’d known what it was before, but it was different only reading about it. Now it was close and hot and painful, and he was hard pressed to keep his stiff upper lip and hold back on his tears. He’d failed with Buffy, with Willow, with all of them. It was all falling apart around him.

        Willow looked up at Tara and Xander, more terrified now than she had been before the crystal was broken. She was the witch.  _She_  was the witch, not Anya, and she had gone too far. This was her spell. Her own spell that had ripped herself and everyone else apart. And everyone would know it was her spell, because she’d done things like this before. Tara was going to leave her after this final straw. And it wasn’t even fair, because her stint as memoryless Willow must have been some kind of effective therapy, because that constant need to do more magic was gone. She was happy as she was. She didn’t want to be a witch anymore. Not if it meant losing everyone she loved.

        Tara stared across the circle at Willow. She felt wounded, betrayed, broken. She didn’t want to feel this way. She wished they could go back to where everything was solved, and they were happy. Yeah, it was different, having Alex with them, but Alex – Xander. He was a sweet man, easy to live with, and she’d grown closer to him after everything they’d been doing together these last months. And now she’d have to leave, because with Willow back the way she was… Tara couldn’t live like that.

        Dawn swallowed and looked down at the table. Now everyone would be back the way they were. Bickering, falling apart. Not to mention, they’d all be really pissed off at her for lying to them. She’d be grounded for a million years, when all she’d wanted was to make everyone happy. And there she’d be again, lonely, frightened, convinced everyone was going to leave her. And they  _would_  leave her, too. Tara and Willow were fighting, Giles was leaving, Spike and Buffy… she was going to lose them, too. She knew Spike was going to have to leave, because Buffy would never, ever let herself be with Spike, and Dawn was going to lose her new big brother.

        Spike’s entire world had crushed in upon him. He wasn’t Randy, and he wasn’t Buffy’s angel. He wasn’t the vampire with the soul. It was silicon, not a soul, holding him back from evil. Evil he now remembered with perfect clarity, with the crunch and the rush and the taste of fresh blood. Not just imaginings, but horrors he had already committed, a full century of sin. That chip had never even been tested while he’d had no memory, his years without human blood having stilled the need for more inside him. Without the memory of the vampire he’d become more like the human man he had been long ago. But it didn’t matter. He had no soul, and no future. He newly missed all the evil he used to do, and more to the point, he would never be worthy of Buffy. He looked across at her. She was staring at the center of the table, her eyes heavy. He was suddenly sure she remembered everything.

        Everything.

        Bugger that.

        “Well, I don’t know about you humans, but the thing didn’t work on me,” he said, standing up.

        Everyone looked up at him. “What was that?” Xander asked.

        “You heard me. Didn’t work. I don’t remember a thing. Maybe it’s just because I’m a vampire, but that’s it. It didn’t work. My mind’s still a blank.” He looked back at the sea of stares. He had to convince them. Living the lie was better than trying to live the truth.

        “Didn’t work,” he said. “I only remember these last months, and you know what? I’m all right with that.” He waved his arms at the Magic Box, at all of them. “You all are my mates, this town is mine to protect, I’m Randy Giles, and Joan is the love of my life. That’s all there is to it. That’s all there’s ever  _going_  to be to it. You know why? Because I’m done!” He leaned forward and brushed the broken crystal to the ground. “I’m not playing this game anymore. I don’t know who I was before this spell, and I don’t want to know. I know who I am!” He pointed at himself, beat at his heart, glared at every single one of them, daring them to call him a liar. “I’m the good guy! And I don’t remember a damn thing about any other bloody stupid life.” He stared Buffy in the eyes. “I’m good with it.”

        For one second, two seconds, five seconds, Spike was sure he’d get away with it. They’d all write it off as him being a vampire, and just accept that he didn’t remember the evil. They remembered, but he didn’t. Maybe they’d accept him better. Maybe they’d keep trusting him. Maybe, just maybe, Buffy wouldn’t leave him.

        “I don’t remember either,” Xander said suddenly.

        Everyone turned to look at him.

        “I’m with Randy. I got nothing.” He shook his head. “And I think I agree, it doesn’t matter. I mean, we have lives now, right? Don’t we? Good lives, interesting lives, lives which… which are working for us.”

        “Alex is right,” Anya said, standing up. “I don’t remember. Which is fine, because I’m happy where I am. With Rupert.”

        “I’m happy where I am, too,” Willow said, swiftly standing up with Xander – Alex. “I don’t need to be what I was before I became who I am now. Tara?” She stared earnestly across at her lover. “You know that, right?”

        Tara hesitated. “I do know that,” she said finally. “And guess we’re not… who we were before, are we?”

        “I’m not,” Willow said desperately.

        Very slowly Tara stood up. “I… don’t remember, either,” she said. “Not any of it.”

        Giles and Dawn looked across at each other. They both already knew, but they both already had known. Neither of them had wanted to know. And so long as everyone else was saying it…. “I remember nothing,” Giles said softly, and stood with a deep breath. “Dawn?”

        “Me, neither,” she said.

        And everyone turned to Buffy.

        Suddenly Buffy laughed. “All this work trying to find a cure for this spell, and it all blows up in our faces!” She stood up and grinned sunnily at all of them. “I don’t remember anything, either. Except that these last few months have been really, really happy. Let’s not try anymore,” she said. “Let’s just… be what we are.”

        “Yes!” Alex said.

        “I’m with you!” said Willow.

        “I can absolutely do this,” Tara said.

        “I’m happy with Rupert,” Anya said.

        “I’m perfectly content,” Rupert added.

        “I’m  _so_  happy!” Dawn cried out.

        Joan turned to Randy. “So it’s not just you,” she said to him. “It didn’t work for any of us.”

        “You, either?” Randy asked.

        “All I remember is this,” she said. She held out her hand, and he reached out and took it. Only he knew how hard she squeezed him, though. She’d have broken the hand of a human man. “Guys?” she said looking around. “Let’s go home.”

 

        ***

 

        Rupert and Anya were moaning and groaning up in their room later that night as they celebrated their newfound acceptance of their new life. They got so loud Dawn actually pounded on the wall reminding them there were innocent children present. They lowered their volume, but the bed continued to creak.

        Joan couldn’t sleep. She knew she should go out and patrol, but she wasn’t sure she was up to it. Not tonight. She sat down on the couch, really intending to turn on the TV, but she couldn’t see the remote anywhere, and she didn’t feel like getting up to look for it.

        Randy came in from the basement. “What are you doing up?” he asked her. He’d been avoiding her, going out for cigarettes, and then retreating to the basement when he got back.

        “I don’t feel like sleeping.”

        “You need your sleep,” he said. He came to sit down on the coffee table. He looked so different in buff pants and a white button up shirt. A completely different creature from… Spike.

        “I lied,” Buffy said quietly. “I don’t know about the others, but… I remember everything. I remember what it was like before this spell.”

        Randy’s face fell. Some part of him had been hoping the humans really hadn’t remembered at all. “Really?”

        “You were never my angel. You were Spike.”

        “Your enemy,” he said quietly. He waited, wondering if she was about to accuse him of remembering, too. He swallowed. “But I’m... not your enemy now. You know that, right?”

        Buffy closed her eyes.

        “Look… I’ll be whoever you want me to be,” he insisted. “William, Spike, Randy, even bloody Angel, whatever you want. You know I’d be your slave if you wanted it of me, Buffy.”

        She looked up, and they both knew they both knew. “Joan,” she said quietly.

        He went down to his knees and took her hand, staring up at her. “Joan,” he said. “I love you.”

        She closed her eyes again as tears began to spill out of them. “I’m tired,” she said. “I don’t want to remember the things I’m remembering.”

        Randy moved to sit beside her, pulling her into his arms, and she cried and cried and cried against his chest. “It’s all right, baby,” he whispered, kissing the top of her head. “It’ll be all right, pet. It’s over now. You just have to keep living until you feel better. And you will feel better, I promise you. You can make it through this.”

        “You remember, don’t you,” she whimpered. “You remember what I told you. Where I’ve been?”

        “You want the truth?”

        She sobbed quietly. “No,” she whispered.

        He hesitated. “All I remember is that I love you,” he finally said. “That’s all that matters to me.” He kissed her tears away and looked into her eyes. “We can make this work.”

        “But you… you aren’t Angel,” Joan said. “You don’t have a soul, you don’t—”

        “Bloody right I’m no Angel,” Randy said. “And if a soul matters to you that much, I’ll just… go and get one, dammit!” She didn’t answer. “Joan,” he whispered. “Did you hear me?”

        She looked up. “Yes.”

        “And?”

        “And that’s not what I meant.”

        “What did you mean, then?”

        “Do you really feel… like you have a soul?”

        Randy stared at her. “I have a heart,” he said quietly. “Is that enough?”

        She hesitated.

        “Joan,” he insisted. “Is that still enough?”

        It was enough when she didn’t know. Why couldn’t it still be enough now? “I know who you are when everything is stripped away,” she said. “And I know I don’t want to lose that man.” He swallowed and she touched his chest, her eyes unfocused. “Are you still that man?”

        He put his finger beneath her chin and made her look at him. His eyes were very blue. “I will always be this man,” he said. “I’ll be your lover, and your follower, I’ll be the vampire with a heart if not a soul. Let me be the good guy. With you.”

        “You have been a good guy,” Joan said quietly.

        “We’ve been good together,” Randy said. “Remember?” He caressed the hair beside her face. “Remember.”

        She stared into him, into his soul, or at least the place where he should have had one. She remembered he had been her enemy. But she remembered other things, too. Laughing with him in the home goods department. Fighting beside him against vampires in the cemetery. Making love to him in the basement. Watching TV with him, making snarky comments to the screen. Watching him help Dawn with her homework.

        “I remember,” she whispered. She fell back into his arms. “I remember.”

 

***

 

        “We’re here creating memories,” said Alex, lifting his glass. “Happy memories. Loving memories. Rupert and Anya have been through so much together. Confusion and danger and magic. But through it all they’ve supported each other, and helped to support us. Their knowledge and experiences build on each other. I can’t imagine a woman better for Rupert than Anya. And I can’t imagine a man better for Anya. To the memory of this wonderful day. May it last a lifetime!”

        Everyone raised their glasses to the bride and groom. Anya gave Alex a poignant smile, her eyes shining. Then she rested her head on Rupert’s shoulder. Rupert set down his glass and put his arm around her, kissing her gently on the forehead. She never stopped smiling.

        Joan was smiling, too, as Randy took her out on the dance floor. The song was smooth, and Randy held her close.

        “It’s good to see you happy,” he said to her.

        “Well, it’s a good day,” Joan said.

        It had been a good day. Not all days were good, but this one had been. Anya was resplendent in her wedding dress. Joan, Tara and Willow were all dressed in radioactive green as Anya’s bridesmaids. Alex had stood staunchly by Rupert’s side as his best man. Now Alex was dancing with Tara and Willow in an awkward but happy threesome, and Rupert was twirling Anya around the dance floor with a finesse that surprised everyone but Anya, who apparently knew he could dance. Dawn was dancing with one of Anya’s relatives — Anya had “miraculously been contacted” by a demon who conveniently remembered everyone she’d ever known as a vengeance demon — and she was grinning, too. The DJ had been instructed to pepper the music with seventies British rock, and even Rupert, who was often rather staid and stuffy, was loose and smiling.

        “It good that things can be good,” Randy whispered in Joan’s ear.

        Joan slid up against him and laid her head on his shoulder. The cotton of his suit coat was cool against her cheek. He looked good in a suit. He looked good in anything he wore, particularly the black coat he had mysteriously “found” a few days after the memory counterspell had “gone awry.” Despite the coat he still favored the pale shirts and blue jeans Joan had picked out for him at the store. But he was all decked out in his suit and tie again tonight, Made with Love for Randy. It was comforting to see it again.

        “Things can be good,” Joan whispered. “I know it’s… hard that I’m sad so much.”

        “I don’t mind, love,” Randy said. “So long as you can remember to let yourself be happy sometimes, too.”

        “I can remember,” Joan said. “So long as we all have each other.” She put her arms around his neck and gazed up at him. “With you, I can remember.”

       

 


End file.
